Steven Erikson

Quotes

1. 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.

   p. 457

2. 

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

   p. 563

3. 

   “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.”

   p. 233

4. 

   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.”

   p. 302

5. 

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

   p. 187

6. 

   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.

7. 

   “What do you mean by a tyrant?”

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

   p. 309

8. 

   A title as meaningless as the woman bearing it. The Empress—just another face she’d seen somewhere before, a mask behind which someone hid from mortality.

   “No use hiding,” she whispered, frowning down at the dead leaves and branches around her. “No use.”

   p. 562

9. 

   “The mewling, petty acts,” he’d say, “of a short-lived and short-sighted species, Crokus, can do nothing to mar the Great Cycles of Life.”

   p. 344

10. 

    Paran shook his head, his only surprise the realization that nothing surprised him anymore.

    p. 446

11. 

    The only death I fear is dying ignorant.

    p. 125

12. 

    Do I want you to talk to me, old friend? Do I need your reminders, your wry confirmation that faith is for fools?

    p. 82