Quotes by Steven Erikson

Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.

Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and youd better answer them! [slurred Hellian.] With what? [Banaschar] sneered. Explanations? No. Answers. Theres a difference- Really? How? What difference? Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Ycan always tell those,cause those dont explain nothing and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them and maybe you go out for a pitcher later but who picks up the tab? Thats what I want to know. Right, and answers? Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, cause I dont like what youre telling me, because those answers dont explain nothing!

Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that--events beyond the will of the gods--and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.

Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortals shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched before one now stretched before him.

Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.

From faith,’ replied Emral Lanear, ‘do we not seek guidance?’ ‘Guidance, or the organized assembly and reification of all the prejudices you collectively hold dear?’ ‘You would not speak to us!’ ‘I grew to fear the power of words – their power, and their powerlessness. No matter how profound or perceptive, no matter how deafening their truth, they are helpless to defend themselves. I could have given you a list. I could have stated, in the simplest terms, that this is how I want you to behave, and this must be the nature of your belief, and your service, and your sacrifice. But how long, I wonder, before that list twisted in interpretation? How long before deviation yielded condemnation, torture, death?’ She slowly leaned forward. ‘How long, before my simple rules to a proper life become a call to war? To the slaughter of unbelievers? How long, Emral Lanear, before you begin killing in my name?’ ‘Then what do you want of us?’ Lanear demanded. ‘You could have stopped thinking like children who need to be told what’s right and what’s wrong. You damned well know what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s pretty simple, really. It’s all about harm. It’s about hurting, and not just physical, either. You want a statement for your faith in me? You wish me to offer you the words you claim to need, the rules by which you are to live your lives? Very well, but I should warn you, every deity worthy of worship will offer you the same prescription. Here it is, then. Don’t hurt other people. In fact, don’t hurt anything capable of suffering. Don’t hurt the world you live in, either, or its myriad creatures. If gods and goddesses are to have any purpose at all, let us be the ones you must face for the crimes of your life. Let us be the answer to every unfeeling, callous, cruel act you committed, every hateful word you uttered, and every spiteful wound you delivered.’ ‘At last!’ cried Emral Lanear. ‘You didn’t need me for that rule.

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

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

We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheated, before blood wets the ground and screams fill the air, that the futility descends upon us all. Without our armor, we would all weep.

The nature of conspiracy, which among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities, real or imagined, of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was an announcement of the believers own sense of utter helplessness in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.

If not for a dumb beasts incomprehension at its own destruction beneaththe loving hands of two heartbroken children.

In my dreams I come face to face with myriad reflections of myself, all unknown and passing strange. They speak unending in languages not my own and walk with companions I have never met, in places my steps have never gone. In my dreams I walk worlds where forests crowd my knees and half the sky is walled ice. Dun herds flow like mud, vast floods tusked and horned surging over the plain, and lo, they are my memories, the migrations of my soul.

Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering! The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?Karsa grinned, Why, a civilized one.Indeed! Shadowthrone turned to Cotillion. And you doubted this one!

The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what wed rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and thrives on destruction. ~ Deadhouse Gates

...Were hostages ever killed?She shook her head. Not until the end. When everything...fell apart. All it needs,,she said, memories clouding her mind, is the breaking of one rule, one law. A breaking that then no one calls to account. Once that happens, once the shock passes, every law shatters. Every rule of conduct, of proper behaviour, it all vanishes. Then the hounds inside each and everyone of us is unleashed. At that moment Withal - she met his eyes, defiant against the grief she saw in them - we show our true selves. We are not beasts- we are something far worse. There deep inside us. You see it - the emptiness in the eyes, as horror upon horror is committed, and no one feels. No one feels a thing. --Steven Erikson... Dust of Dreams

Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women.He thought for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare thatd be. Its the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it...

I am Crone, eldest of the Moons Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a hundred thousand years of human folly. Hence my tattered coat and broken beak as evidence of your indiscriminate destruction. I am but a winged witness of your eternal madness.

Dour music has its own beauty, for the song of ruin is most fertile.

None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom... Lets kill him, Crokus muttered, if only to put him out of our misery.