Steven Erikson citations

Page 3

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

“No, do not look at me that way, you of smooth and subtle thought, you give your sympathy too quickly and therein hide your belief in your own superiority. I do not deny your cleverness, but I question your compassion.”

“Then, does everyone lives in fear?'
The firelight barely reached the huge man standing beside Raskan, and the deep voice that came from that vague shape sounded loose, unguarded. 'I would say, most of the time, yes. Fear that our opinion might be chalanged. Fear that our way of seeing things might be called ignorant, self-serving, or indeed evil. Fear for our persons. Fear for our future, our fate. Our moment of death. Fear of failing in all that we set out to achieve. Fear of being forgotten.”

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

“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.”

“Mappo Trell, I believe motivations prove, ultimately, irrelevant. Upon either side of the battlefield the face grins with blunt stupidity, even as smoke fills the sky from horizon to horizon, even as crops whither and die, even as sweet land turns to salt. Inequity ends, Trell, when no-one and no thing is left standing.”

“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.”

“Nor would he recognize hope if it came to him. Too much a stranger, too long a ghost.”

“Keep a watch out, fools! There are things out there and you know what happens when things arrive!”

“Wisdom did not belong to mortals, and those whom others called wise were only those who, through grim experience, had touched the very edges of unwelcome truths. For the wise, even joy was tinged with sorrow. No, the world made its demands upon mortals and they were immediate ones, pressingly, ferociously so, and even knowing a reasonable course was not enough to alter a mad plunge into disaster.”

“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.”

“Reconciliation does not demand that one side surrender to the other. The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.”

“Oh," the figure settled back down, "those reasons. Well, yes. Clever, even. But still profoundly stupid.”

“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.”

“Just so,' agreed the King. 'So accept the escort, Adjunct, or I shall hold my breath until I achieve a most royal shade of purple.”

“Necessity, now there's a word to feed every outrage on decency.”

“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?”

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

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

“Lorn stared at Tool. “Was that an attempt at humor?” she asked.
The T’lan Imass adjusted his helmet. “That depends on your mood, Adjunct.””

“He who would dominate must learn early that those resisting his command should be destroyed.”

“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.”

“"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.”

“Compassion existed when and only when one could step outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the cage.”

“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”

“The righteous will claim sole domain on judgment. The righteous are the first to make hands into fists, the first to shout down dissenters, the first to bully others into compliance.”

“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.”

“The only death I fear is dying ignorant.”

“Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal’s hands. Such is the only end to immortality.”