Best 217 quotes of Steven Erikson on MyQuotes

Steven Erikson

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    Steven Erikson

    A celebration of insignificance, Is that all we are in the end? And one day I’ll just be one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder

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    Steven Erikson

    A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn't know. Consider,' he continued, Gotho's Folly. Gotho's curse was in being too aware - of everything. Every permutation, every potential. Enough to poison every scan he cast on the world. It availed him naught, and worse, he was aware of even that.

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    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    And in the city on all sides, the howling of the Hounds rose in an ear-shattering, soul-flailing crescendo. The Lord of Death had arrived, to walk the streets in the City of Blue Fire.

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    Steven Erikson

    And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.

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    Steven Erikson

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

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    Steven Erikson

    A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    Ben Adaephon Delat," Pearl said plaintively, "see the last who comes. You send me to my death." "I know," Quick Ben whispered. "Flee, then. I will hold them enough to ensure your escape no more." Quick Ben sank down past the roof. Before he passed from sight Pearl spoke again. "Ben Adaephon Delat, do you pity me?" "Yes" he replied softly, then pivoted and dropped down into darkness.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    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?

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    Steven Erikson

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

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    Curious,” Bauchelain said. “What is it you wish us to do for you?” “Usurp the king,” Imid Factalo said. “Usurp, as in depose.” “Right.” “Depose, as in remove.” “Yes.” “Remove, as in kill.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    Detachment is a flaw, not a virtue-don’t you realize that?

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    Steven Erikson

    Do mortal fools still measure the increments leading to their deaths, wagering pleasures against costs, persisting in the delusion that deeds have value, that the world and all the gods sit in judgment over every decision made or not made?

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    Steven Erikson

    "Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly." "I want to be a soldier. A hero." "You'll grow out of it.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    First in , Last out. Motto of the bridgeburners

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    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.

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    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    He was a man who would never ask for sympathy. He was a man who sought only to do what was right. Such people appear in the world, every world, now and then, like a single refrain of some blessed song, a fragment caught on the spur of an otherwise raging cacophony. Imagine a world without such souls. Yes, it should have been harder to do.

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    Steven Erikson

    He was not a modest man. Contemplating suicide, he summoned a dragon.' Gothos' Folly

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    Steven Erikson

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

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    Steven Erikson

    I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.

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    Steven Erikson

    I'll not deny I am impressed by your mastery of six warrens, Quick Ben. In retrospect, you should have held back on at least half of what you command." The man made to rise. "But, Bauchelain," the wizard replied, "I did.

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    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

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

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    Steven Erikson

    It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.

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    Steven Erikson

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

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of human condition. No, they proclaimed morality was an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable

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    Steven Erikson

    More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood. Armour encumbers, restricts the body and soul within it. But it also protects. Blows are blunted. Feelings lose their edge, leaving us to suffer naught but a plague of bruises, and, after a time, bruises fade.

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    Steven Erikson

    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    Never, dear gods. Never mess with mortals.

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    Steven Erikson

    None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...' Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.

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    Steven Erikson

    Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish. -And we’re no different you’re saying- We are, soldier. We possess the privilege of choice. The gift of foresight. Though often we come too late in acknowledging responsibilities….

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    Steven Erikson

    Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!

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    Steven Erikson

    One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Steven Erikson

    Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.

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    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.

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    Steven Erikson

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