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.

“The Empress expects obedience of her servants, and demands loyalty.”

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

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.

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.

The power he commanded insisted upon subjects. Strength was ever relative, and he could not dominate without the company of the dominated.

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.

As with most unwitting servants of the gods, once the game was done so was the servant’s life.

“An item,” he said softly, his eyes on the disc, “that passes without provenance, pursued by many who thirst for its cold kiss, on which life and all that lay within life is 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. It is as it is, says Kruppe, worthless but for those who insist otherwise.”

Kallor said: “I walked this land when the T’lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?”

“Yes,” said Caladan Brood, “you never learn.”

Your guest is mundane, a restless personage whose thoughts are thick with greed and treachery. A demon crouches on his shoulder, named Ambition.

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.

“What do you mean by a tyrant?”

“One whose blood was poisoned by the ambition to rule over others.”