Steven Erikson Quotes

It's our nature, isn't it? Again and again, we cling to the foolish belief taht simple solutions exist

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.

Burdens were born from the loss of innocence. Naïveté. While the innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of truths was possible. He sensed the completion of an internal journey, and Paran found he did not appreciate recognizing that fact, nor the place where he now found himself. It did not suit him that ignorance remained inextricably bound to innocence, and the loss of one meant the loss of the other.

The slower your path, the muddier your boots?'
'Even so,' Icarium said, nodding.
'Time is nothing like that.'
'Are you so certain? When we must wait, our minds fill with sludge, random thoughts like so much refuse. When we are driven to action, our current is swift, the water seemingly clear, cold and sharp.

Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons — they can’t be danced round. They can’t be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars — they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.

The High Mage scowled. 'All right. Maybe I was trying to scare you.
It'll be rough, though. That much is true. And over on the Silanda, Fiddler will be heaving his guts out.'
Kalam, thinking on it, suddenly smiled. 'That cheers me up.'
'Me too.

Draw a breath,
a deep breath,
now hold it, my friends,
hold it long
for the world
the world drowns.

'Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides.

Your cynicism lies in your willing abuse of others to consolidate your superiority over them. My cynicism is in regard to humanity’s wilful blindness with respect to its own extinction.’

‘Without that wilful blindness there is naught but despair.’

‘Oh, I am not that cynical. In fact, I do not agree at all. Maybe when the wilful blindness runs its inevitable course, there will be born wilful wisdom, the revelation of seeing things as they are.’

‘Things? To which things are you referring, old man?’

‘Why, that everything of true value is, in fact, free.

There was an old saying among the Perish that a room full of women was a knife-seller’s vision of paradise. ‘There will be betrayal.’ Oh yes indeed. Betrayal .

“What do you mean by a tyrant?”
“One whose blood was poisoned by the ambition to rule over others.”

While the innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of truths was possible.

History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity.

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

Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics