Steven Erikson Quotes

Steven Erikson delivers a poetic, slightly dark take on memory, power and human nature.

54 quotes

1. An item that passes without provenance, pursued by many who thirst for it's cold kiss, on which life and all that lay within life are often gambled. Alone, a beggar's crown. In great numbers, a king's folly. Weighted with ruin, yet blood washes from it beneath the lightest rain, and to the next no hint of its cost.

2. The tiger is humbled by memories of prey. (Final thoughts of Treach, the Tiger of Summer)

3. 'They've had a long time to think,' Paran murmured. 'Sometimes, that's all there's needed. The heart of wisdom is tolerance. I think.'

4. 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.

5. Memories belong in the soil, in stone, in wind. They are the land's unseen meaning, such that touches the soul of all who would look - truly look - upon it. Touches, in faintest whisper, old, almost shapeless echoes - to which a mortal life adds its own.

6. To grieve is the gift of the living - a gift so many of our kin have long lost

7. 'Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck of course.'

8. '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.'

9. '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 -'

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

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

12. 'The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.'

13. 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.

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

15. '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 before one now stretched before him.'

16. 'You leave me without hope,' Brys said.

17. ' 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.'

18. 'Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.'

19. 'Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.'

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

21. 'What war is this?'

22. 'Indeed Bugg. is it because, do you think, at the human core, we are naught but liars and cheats?'

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

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

25. '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.'

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

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 'For Hood's sake,' the foreigner muttered. 'What's wrong with words?'

30. '- all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims ... for what?'

31. Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.

32. It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain.

33. All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

34. The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.

35. 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.

36. Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity - the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us. But if that is too dire , let's call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom.

37. Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.

38. Children are dying." Lull nodded. "That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.

39. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.

40. 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.

41. Name none of the fallen, for they stand in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.

42. Soldiers are issued armour for their flesh and bones, but they must fashion their own for their souls. Piece by piece.

43. Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.

44. The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.

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

46. Betrayal was the greatest of all crimes, for it took all that was human within a person and made it a thing of pain. In the face of that, murder itself was surcease: it was quick, and it ended the anguish and despair of a life without hope.

47. I was needed, but I myself did not need. I had followers, but not allies, and only now do I understand the difference. And it is vast.

48. You are very easily exasperated, my dear. If you're a leaf trembling on a wide, deep river, relax and ride the current. It's always worked for me, I assure you.

49. I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

50. You’re loitering, citizen.” “Actually, I was hesitating.

51. Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets' treasured value.

52. 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.

53. Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?' The Imass shrugged before replying. 'I think of futility, Adjunct.' 'Do all Imass think about futility?' 'No. Few think at all.' 'Why is that?' The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. 'Because Adjunct, it is futile.

54. So you say, with your shiny hair and pouty lips - and those breasts - just wait till you start dropping whelps, they'll be at your ankles one day, big as they are - not the whelps, the breasts. The whelps will be in your hair - no, not the shiny hair on your head, well, yes, that hair, but only as a manner of speech.