Steven Erikson Quotes

The heart of wisdom is tolerance.

Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.

You must dismantle your sources, lest you do nothing but ape the prejudices of others

And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.

Children are dying." Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.

Your brain works with all the subtlety of a malicious child.

And in the city on all sides, the howling of the Hounds rose in an ear-shattering, soul-flailing crescendo. The Lord of Death had arrived, to walk the streets in the City of Blue Fire.

For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives.

No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine.

You are very easily exasperated, my dear. If you're a leaf trembling on a wide, deep river, relax and ride the current. It's always worked for me, I assure you.

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.

When you've burned the bridges behind you, don't go starting a fire on the one in front of you.

The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.

There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.

Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.

The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.

The only death I fear is dying ignorant.

I was needed, but I myself did not need. I had followers, but not allies, and only now do I understand the difference. And it is vast.

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They’re allowed to think.

It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain.

Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.

Such is the vastness of his genius that he can outwit even himself.

Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love all manner of sacrifice could be borne.

The notion of evil for its own sake strikes me as boring -- all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims... for what?

The art of illusion is grace itself.

First in , Last out. Motto of the bridgeburners

He was not a modest man. Contemplating suicide, he summoned a dragon.' Gothos' Folly

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.

A celebration of insignificance, Is that all we are in the end? And one day I’ll just be one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder

Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.

You’re loitering, citizen.” “Actually, I was hesitating.

You always fashioned yourself as the Empire's harshest Fist, didn't you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty's a virtue.

I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.

Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.

We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again." ~Fiddler, pg. 558

It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.

Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets' treasured value.

"Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly." "I want to be a soldier. A hero." "You'll grow out of it."

Soldiers are issued armour for their flesh and bones, but they must fashion their own for their souls. Piece by piece.

If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in? That village, that city, that life? We are desperate with our dreams. What - oh, what - does that say?

What matter the colour of the collar around a man's neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?

Shake your fist all you want but dead is dead

A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

I mean the only thing us dead soldiers got in common is that none of us was good enough or lucky enough to survive the fight. We're a host of failures.