Steven Erikson

"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.

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.

"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?"

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

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

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.

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

To grieve is the gift of the living — a gift so many of our kin have long lost