Steven Erikson Quotes

She walked alongside him, saying nothing. Thinking. At last, she sighed. 'It is said that only one's will can fight against chaos, that no other weapons are possible.'

There exists an exchange of trust between the ruler and the ruled. Abuse that from either direction and all mutual agreements are nullified.

Control yourselves. Be orderly. Don’t blow any of us up. Am I understood?’
A quick nod. ‘Aye, sir. Bless you, sir.’
Startled, Paran’s voice sharpened, ‘Bless me?’
And from the mob of sappers came a muttered chorus, echoing the corporal’s blessing. Paran stepped back, struggled for a moment to regain his composure, and then raised his voice. ‘No need to rush – there’s plenty for everyone.

"And so we weep for the fallen. We weep for those yet to fall, and in war the screams are loud and harsh and in peace the wail is so drawn-out we tell ourselves we hear nothing.

And so this music is a lament, and I am doomed to hear its bittersweet notes for a lifetime.
Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.

Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers and is not threatened by them.

Show me a god who understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.

Show —

'Stop,' Gesler said in a grating voice.

Blinking, Fiddler lowered the instrument. 'What?'

'You cannot end with such anger, Fid. Please.'

Anger? I am sorry. He would have spoken that aloud, but suddenly he could not. His gaze lowered, and he found himself studying the littered floor at his feet. Someone, in passing – perhaps Fiddler himself – had inadvertently stepped on a cockroach. Half-crushed, smeared into the warped wood, its legs kicked feebly. He stared at it in fascination.

Dear creature, do you now curse an indifferent god?

'You're right,' he said. 'I can't end it there.' He raised the fiddle again. 'Here's a different song for you, one of the few I've actually learned. From Kartool. It's called "The Paralt's Dance".' He rested the bow on the strings, then began.

Wild, frantic, amusing. Its final notes recounted the triumphant female eating her lover. And even without words, the details of that closing flourish could not be mistaken.

The four men laughed.

Then fell silent once more."

"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

Laws decide wich forms of oppression are allowed, Lord. And because of that, those laws are servants to those in power, for whom oppression is given as a right over those who have little or no power.

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.

Life is like a clam,” Birds Mottle’s father once told her. “Years filtering shit then some bastard cracks you open and scrapes you into its damned mouth.

You were so quick to judge, weren’t you? Ah, you revealed so much with that contemptuous utterance. And I admit to being amused at my own instinctive response to your words. Naive. Errant take me, I wanted to rip your head from your body, like decapitating a swamp-fly. I wanted to show you true contempt. Mine. For you and your kind. I wanted to take that dismissive expression on your face and push it through an offal grinder. You think you have all the answers? You must, given the ease of your voiced judgement. Well, you pathetic little creature, one day uncertainty will come to your door, will clamber down your throat, and it will be a race to see which arrives first, humility or death. Either way, I will spare you a moment’s compassion, which is what sets you and me apart, isn’t it?

Too many regrets. Lost chances — and with each one passing the less human we all became, and the deeper into the nightmare of power we all sank.

Ammanas slipped noiselessly forward until he was on the other side of the corpse. ‘It’s her, isn’t it.’
‘It is.’
‘How many times do our followers have to die, Cotillion?’ the god asked, then sighed. ‘Then again, she clearly ceased being a follower some time ago.’
‘She thought we were gone, Ammanas. The Emperor and Dancer. Gone. Dead.’
‘And in a way, she was right.’
‘In a way, aye. But not in the most important way.’
‘Which is?’
Cotillion glanced up, then grimaced. ‘She was a friend.’
‘Ah, that most important way.

Have any of these thoughts been my own? Look at me—my every move seems a desperate search for someone to blame, always someone else. I’ve made being a tool of a god an excuse, a justification for not thinking, for simply reacting. And others have died for it.

Humility. Seek it within yourself, be as sceptical of your own superiority as your intellect is sceptical of the superiority of things other than itself. Turn your critical faculties inward, with ruthless diligence, and by that you will understand the true meaning of courage. It is the kind of courage that sees you end up on your knees, but with the will to rise once more, to begin it all over again.

As if the only genuine gestures were the small ones, the ones devoid of an audience. As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.

Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.