Steven Erikson Quotes

Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

But now Apsalar was trying to tell him that competence was not justification. That necessity demanded its own path and there was no virtue to be found at its heart.

Self-righteous wrath had planted more corpses in the ground than an empire could lay claim to,

I admit,’ said Spite, ‘to a certain melancholy when visiting vibrant cities, as is this Darujhistan. A long life teaches one just how ephemeral is such thriving glory. Why, I have come again upon cities I knew well in the age of their greatness, only to find crumbled walls, dust and desolation.’
Cutter bared his teeth and said, ‘Darujhistan has stood for two thousand years and it will stand for another two thousand-even longer.’
Spite nodded. ’Precisely.

There was, in his mind, no truer measure of stupidity than to imagine that the world could be reduced to two sides,

The argument was this: a civilization shackled to the strictures of excessive control on its populace, from choice of religion through to the production of goods, will sap the will and the ingenuity of its people – for whom such qualities are no longer given sufficient incentive or reward. At face value, this is accurate enough. Trouble arrives when the opponents to such a system institute its extreme opposite, where individualism becomes godlike and sacrosanct, and no greater service to any other ideal (including community) is possible. In such a system rapacious greed thrives behind the guise of freedom, and the worst aspects of human nature come to the fore, a kind of intransigence as fierce and nonsensical as its maternalistic counterpart. And so, in the clash of these two extreme systems, one is witness to brute stupidity and blood-splashed insensitivity; two belligerent faces glowering at each other across the unfathomed distance, and yet, in deed and in fanatic regard, they are but mirror reflections. This would be amusing if it weren’t so pathetically idiotic…

Do I want you to talk to me, old friend? Do I need your reminders, your wry confirmation that faith is for fools?

Coltaine rattles slow
across the burning land.
The wind howls through the bones
of his hate-ridden command.
Coltaine leads a chain of dogs
ever snapping at his hand.

Coltaine`s fist bleeds the journey home
along rivers of red-soaked sand.
His train howls through his bones
in spiteful reprimand.
Coltaine leads a chain of dogs
ever snapping at his hand.

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

Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks — all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.

What I lack is proof to the contrary, sir. I ain’t seen it yet, in all my years. What do you think makes criminals in the first place?’ ‘Stupidity and greed.’ ‘Besides those? I’ll tell you. It’s looking around, real carefully. It’s seeing what’s really there, and who wins every time, and it’s deciding that despair tastes like shit. It’s deciding to do whatever it takes to sneak through, to win what you can for yourself.

'What worth peace when it was maintained by threat?

"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."

Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.

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