Steven Erikson Quotes

We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn't something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you'll find they're one and all tyrants or would-be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.

The world, Ahlrada Ahn knew, was indifferent to the necessity of preservation. Of histories, of stories layered with meaning and import. It cared nothing for what was forgotten, for memory and knowledge had never been able to halt the endless repetition of wilful stupidity that so bound peoples and civilizations.

"Oh," the figure settled back down, "those reasons. Well, yes. Clever, even. But still profoundly stupid."

"I mean the only thing us dead soldiers got in common is that none of us was good enough or lucky enough to survive the fight. We're a host of failures."

Keep a watch out, fools! There are things out there and you know what happens when things arrive!

You cannot fight unreason, and as these dead multitudes will tell you — are telling you right now — certitude is the enemy.

"Indeed Bugg. is it because, do you think, at the human core, we are naught but liars and cheats?" "Probably." "With no hope of ever overcoming our instinctive nastiness?" "Hard to say. How have we done so far?"

"What war is this?" "A pointless one." "They are all pointless Denier. Subjugation and defeat breed resentment and hatred, and such things cannot be bribed away." "Unless the spirit of the defeated is crushed," Trull said.

If one could always choose the right question, then every answer could be as obvious.

"You leave me without hope," Brys said. "I am sorry for that. Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. For you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge."

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

Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.

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.

An army that waits is soon an army at war with itself.

From the sun-drenched south slopes of Gris, where grow the finest grapes this world has seen. Is mine an informed opinion, you are wondering? Most assuredly so, lass, since I hold a majority interest in said vineyards —