Steven Erikson Quotes

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Should you ever outrun the guilt within your past, Sorceress, you will have outrun your soul. When it finds you again it will kill you.

Steven Erikson
History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. No more than that. As for the rest, kick through the bones and wreckage for they are what remain, what lasts until all turn to dust.

Steven Erikson
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.

Steven Erikson
'Wisdom did not belong to mortals, and those whom others called wise were only those who, through grim experience, had touched the very edges of unwelcome truths. For the wise, even joy was tinged with sorrow. No, the world made its demands upon mortals and they were immediate ones, pressingly, ferociously so, and even knowing a reasonable course was not enough to alter a mad plunge into disaster.'

Steven Erikson
The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what we'd rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and thrives on destruction.

Steven Erikson
The Empress expects obedience of her servants, and demands loyalty.
Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.

Steven Erikson
All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we're going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.

Steven Erikson
Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things - once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

Steven Erikson
If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in. We are desperate with our dreams. What - oh, what - does that say?

Steven Erikson
For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives.

Steven Erikson
'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.

Steven Erikson
Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation. None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve. To face death is to stand alone.

Steven Erikson
Compassion existed when and only when one could step outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the cage.

Steven Erikson
'... In elegant remoteness, she arrives like a work of high art, and you may well desire to edge ever closer, seeking flaws in the maker's hand, but the closer you get, the more she blurs before your eyes.'

Steven Erikson
We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T'lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.

Steven Erikson
Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.

Steven Erikson
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.'

Steven Erikson
Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women.He thougt for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that'd be. It's the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it...

Steven Erikson
"There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself."
"With words."

Steven Erikson
Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

Steven Erikson
Through the gamut of life we struggled for control, for a means to fashion the world around us, an eternal, hopeless hunt for the privilege of being able to predict the shape of our lives.

Steven Erikson
I love you still, but with your death I succumbed to a kind of infatuation. I convinced myself that what you and I had, so very briefly, was of far vaster and deeper import than it truly was. Of all the weapons we chose to turn upon ourselves, guilt is the sharpest, Silverfox. It can carve one's own past into unrecognizable shapes, false memories leading to beliefs that sow all kinds of obsessions.

Steven Erikson
The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.

Steven Erikson
'Now, it's just occurred to me that we're missing something crucial. Ah, yes, an artist! Bugg, have we a court artist? We need an artist! Find us an artist! Nobody move!'

Steven Erikson
All they get around here is stories. Stories don't make you bleed. Stories don't make you go hungry, don't give you sore feet. When you're young smelling of pigshit and convinced there ain't a weapon in all the damn world that's going to hurt you, all stories do is make you want to be part of them.

Steven Erikson
'I think I understand. Before there can be disdain, there must be pride.

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

Steven Erikson
I look at you and I see a man because that's what men are capable of—I don't hunt for excuses because I don't like to think that that's how nasty we can get. We look at Sorry and we see reflections of ourselves. Hood take it, if we don't like what we see.

Steven Erikson
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 that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.

Steven Erikson
'It is the legacy of most intelligent beings to revel in slaughter for a time,' Haut replied. 'In this we play at being gods. In this, we lie to ourselves with delusions of omnipotence. There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow.'

Steven Erikson