Best Steven Erikson Quotes & Sayings

Peace would settle on his soul. — Steven Erikson

She'd seen them them all before, those faces. She knew them all, knew the sound of their voices, sounds mired in human emotions, sounds clear and pure with thought, and sounds wavering in that chasm between the two. Is this, she wondered, my legacy? And one day I'll be just one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder. — Steven Erikson

By the Lady's never-sucked teats!"
"Elas Sil!"
"Oh shut up! I'm a woman, I can curse about things like that. Wait, it's not as dark up ahead. Come on, and hasn't that baby of yours been asleep a long time? You sure it's not dead?"
"Wel, it peed on me halfway down that last corridor, and last I looked it was smiling."
"Huh. It ever amazes me women get talked into motherhood. — Steven Erikson

I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's 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. — Steven Erikson

As he made his way back to his estate, Baruk recalled his lone meeting with Vorcan, only a few nights after her awakening. She had entered the chamber with her usual feline grace. The wounds she had borne were long healed and she had found a new set of clothes, loose and — Steven Erikson

Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea.
Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want.
Gift to them the calm pool of words, watch them draw the sword.
Bless upon them the satiation of peace, see them starve for war.
Grant them darkness and they will lust for light.
Deliver to them death and hear them beg for life.
Beget life and they will murder your kin.
Be as they are and they will see you different.
Show wisdom and you are a fool.
The shore gives way to the sea.
And the sea, my friends,
Does not dream of you. — Steven Erikson

It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. — Steven Erikson

What see you in the horizon's bruised smear
That cannot be blotted out
By your raised hand? — Steven Erikson

We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. — Steven Erikson

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They're allowed to think. — Steven Erikson

Not even the dead know the end to war.
-Iskar Jarak — Steven Erikson

Too old to dream of perfection, perhaps, she had instead discovered a certain delicious appeal in flaws. — Steven Erikson

Rhizan gathered in writhing clumps at his hands and feet, — Steven Erikson

Barring the necessary brains, of course," Kruppe said, "which is my true skill - though one such as Coll would never understand such abilities, alien as they are to him." Coll — Steven Erikson

To mourn is to feel a flower's slow death, hill bear. To bed a man is to recall the flower's bright glory. — Steven Erikson

Twilight,' he said to Yan Tovis, 'that's a Letherii word you use. Would you be surprised if I told you the word for "twilight", in your original language, was "yenander"? And that "antovis" meant "night" or even "dark"? Your own name is your title, and I can see by your expression that you didn't even know it. Yedan Derryg? Not sure what "derryg" is -- we'll need to ask Sandalath -- but "yedanas" is "watch", both act and title. — Steven Erikson

With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it. — Steven Erikson

Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything - love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.' She — Steven Erikson

She eyed him steadily, wondering at his sudden ... humanity. Maybe dying did away with the usual games, the pretenses of the living dance. — Steven Erikson

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. — Steven Erikson

Some roads, once set out upon, reveal no possible path but forward. Every other track is blocked by snarls of thorns, steaming fissures or rearing walls of stone. What waits at the far end of the forward path is unknown, and since knowledge itself may prove a curse, the best course is simply to place one foot in front of the other, and think not at all of fate or the cruel currents of destiny. — Steven Erikson

The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words. — Steven Erikson

We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten. — Steven Erikson

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. — Steven Erikson

[T]he unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier
dead, melted wax
demands a response among the living ... a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous
as if cursed
while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?
Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. — Steven Erikson

High house shadow, and a knife in the dark. A new game's begun, or the old one's just turned. — Steven Erikson

There's no certainty in this, Baruk. That seems a fact particularly galling to you humans. — Steven Erikson

So you have found me and would know the tale. When a poet speaks of truth to another poet, waht hope has truth? Let me ask this, then. DOes one find memory in invention? Or will you find invention in memory? Wich bows in servitude befor the other? Will the measure of greatness be weighed solely in details? Perhaps so, if details make up the full weft of the world, if themes are nothing more than the coomposite of lists perfectly ordered and unerring rendered; and if I should kneel before invention, as if it were memory made perfect. — Steven Erikson

One day, I will be a child again. Carved toys will caper and dance from my mind, out across rock I will raise as mountains. Through grasses I will proclaim forests. For too long I have been trapped in this world of measures, proportions and scale. For too long I have known and understood the limits of what is possible, so cruel in rejecting all that can be imagined. In this way, friend, we are each of us not one but two lives, for ever locked in mortal combat, and from all things at hand, we make weapons.' - Hust Henarald — Steven Erikson

Lorn passed a hand over her eyes, then staggered back a step and reeled into the alley's shadows behind her. She slid down one wall into a sagging crouch. — Steven Erikson

Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present. With its seemingly endless excesses, its ravenous appetites. Ever the same rules, ever the same game. — Steven Erikson

A book of prophesy opens the doors.
You need a second book to close it.
Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc — Steven Erikson

Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal's hands. Such is the only end to immortality. — Steven Erikson

A terrible burden seemed to drain from him. — Steven Erikson

A bludgeon of wives (surely that must be the plural assignation)! — Steven Erikson

Everything worth fighting for is gained without fighting. — Steven Erikson

To achieve peace, destruction is delivered. To give the gift of freedom, one promises eternal imprisonment. Adjudication obviates the need for justice. This is a studied, deliberate embrace of diametric opposition. It is a belief in balance, a belief asserted with the conviction of religion. But in this case, the proof of a god's power lies not in the cause but in the effect. Accordingly, in this world and in all others, proof is achieved by action, and therefore all action - including the act of choosing inaction - is inherently moral. No deed stands outside the moral context. At the same time, the most morally perfect act is the one taken in opposition to what has occurred before. — Steven Erikson

Then darkness swept in around him and he knew no more. — Steven Erikson