Steven Erikson

“When you've burned the bridges behind you, don't go starting a fire on the one in front of you.”

“Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearthhas ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memoriesagainst dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue mythoughts as I open the Book of the Fallenand breathe deep the scent of history?Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.”

“You are very easily exasperated, my dear. If you're a leaf trembling on a wide, deep river, relax and ride the current. It's always worked for me, I assure you.”

“As if the only genuine gestures were the small ones, the ones devoid of an audience. As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.”

“Time was such an element, she now believed. The stretch of existence between events, consisting of countless other events, all strung together in complex patterns of cause and effect, all laid out like images sewn onto a tapestry, creating a sequence of scenes that, once one stood back, was revealed to be co-existing. Present all at once.”

“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.”

“Fiddler briefly wondered about those three dragons - where they had gone, what tasks awaited them - then he shrugged. Their appearance, their departure and, in between and most importantly, their indifference to the four mortals below was a sobering reminder that the world was far bigger than that defined by their own lives, their own desires and goals. The seemingly headlong plunge this journey had become was in truth but the smallest succession of steps, of no greater import than the struggles of a termite.The worlds live on, beyond us, countless unravelling tales.In his mind's eye he saw his horizons stretch out on all sides, and as they grew ever vaster he in turn saw himself as ever smaller, ever more insignificant.We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again ...”

“Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present”

“The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.'- Traveller”

“Retribution seen in natural catastrophes is manufactured by all too eagerand all too pious people, each one convinced the world will end but spare them and themalone. But we all know, the world is inherited by the obnoxious, not the righteous”

“Do I see control on all sides, or the illusion of control?" List’s face twisted slightly. "Sometimes the two are one and the same. In terms of their effect, I mean. The only difference – or so Coltaine says – is that when you bloody the real thing, it absorbs the damage, while the other shatters.”

“There’s a sweet promise to giving up, but realizing that demands a journey. One of spirit. You can’t walk to Hood’s Gate, you find it before you when the fog clears.”

“Fear bespeaks of wisdom. Recognition of responsibility.”

“To achieve peace, destruction is delivered. To give the gift of freedom, one promises eternal imprisonment. Adjudication obviates the need for justice. This is a studied, deliberate embrace of diametric opposition. It is a belief in balance, a belief asserted with the conviction of religion. But in this case, the proof of a god’s power lies not in the cause but in the effect. Accordingly, in this world and in all others, proof is achieved by action, and therefore all action— including the act of choosing inaction— is inherently moral. No deed stands outside the moral context. At the same time, the most morally perfect act is the one taken in opposition to what has occurred before.”

“When one does not know what one seeks, caution is the surest armour.”

“Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.”

“The mage leaned both hands on the table, scanning the charts splayed out on its surface. There was a map there, showing a land he could not recognize: a ragged coastline of fjords studded with cursory sketches of pine trees. Inland was a faint whitewash, as of ice or snow. A course had been plotted, striking east from the jagged shoreline, then southward across a vast ocean. The Malazan Empire purported to have world maps, but they showed nothing like the land he saw here. The Empire's claim to dominance suddenly seemed pathetic.”

“Show me a mortal who is not pursued, and I’ll show you a corpse. Every hunter is hunted, every mind that knows itself has stalkers. We drive and are driven. The unknown pursues the ignorant, the truth assails every scholar wise enough to know his ignorance, for that is the meaning of unknowable truths.”

“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.”

“Where resides the comforting knowledge of history's vast, cyclical sweep, the ebb and flow of wars and peace? Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.”

“Отдавна умряла проститутка гонеше съвсем жив мъж през тълпата и си искаше отдавна дължими пари за минала услуга.”

“There are times, Kruppe murmurs, when celibacy born of sad deprivation becomes a boon, nay, a source of great relief.”

“He swam at my feet, Powerful arms in broad strokes Sweeping the sand. So I asked this man, What seas do you swim? And to this he answered, 'I have seen shells and the like On this desert floor, So I swim this land's memory Thus honouring its past,' Is the journey far, queried I. 'I cannot say,' he replied, 'For I shall drown long before I am done.'Sayings of the Fool Thenys Bule"Steven Erikson - Malazan Book of the Fallen 02Deadhouse Gates”

“The wine is gone. Only sour wine fumes remain. Drunkenness pretends to resolution.”

“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.”

“(...) niegdyś wierzył nawet w to, że nad całym bytem panuje wszechmocna, dobroczynna istota. A świerszcze grają po to, by pomóc nam zasnąć. Nie sposób odgadnąć, jakie jeszcze głupoty mogły się zakraść do jego młodej, naiwnej głowy przed tymi wszystkimi tysiącleciami.”

“A book of prophesy opens the doors.You need a second book to close it.Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc”

“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.”

“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.”

“The notion of evil for its own sake strikes me as boring -- all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims... for what?”

“My anthropological back gets raised hackles with simple worlds and simple conflicts. Nothing's simple. Nothing ever was.”

“It wasn't too much, to take a frail figure into one's arms for those last moments of life. Better than a cot, or even a bed in a room filled with loved ones. Better, too, than an empty street in the cold rain. To die in someone's arms - could there be anything more forgiving? Every savage barbarian in the world knew the truth of this.”

“By the Lady’s never-sucked teats!”“Elas Sil!”“Oh shut up! I’m a woman, I can curse about things like that. Wait, it’s not as dark up ahead. Come on, and hasn’t that baby of yours been asleep a long time? You sure it’s not dead?”“Wel, it peed on me halfway down that last corridor, and last I looked it was smiling.”“Huh. It ever amazes me women get talked into motherhood.”

“The Lady takes most mortals unto her bosom by maladies of the colon.”“Death by constipation?”

“You’re loitering, citizen.”“Actually, I was hesitating.”

“Emancipor stood in front of the small bush,listening to the birds chirp to greet the morning whilst he emptied his bladder.“Look wel on that yelow, murky stream, Mister Reese—”The manservant started at the voice beside him. “Master! You, uh, surprised me.”“Thus reducing you to a trickle.”

“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.”

“Something’s nibbling my spleen!”

“Aye, Master. Only, how do we know where that dhenrabi might take us?” “Oh, we know that, most certainly. Why, the dhenrabi breeding beds, of course.” “Oh.”

“Look!” piped Korbal Broach.Bauchelain paused. “I see.”Tucking the mangled head under an arm, Korbal Broach walked to the steps, and up he went.”

“Life is like a clam,” Birds Mottle’s father once told her. “Years filtering shit then some bastard cracks you open and scrapes you into its damned mouth.”

“It is your cowardice that offends us, Warleader.’‘I refuse your challenge, Bakal. As I did that of Riggis, and as I will all others that come my way-until our return to our camp.’‘And once there? A hundred warriors shall vie to be first to spill your blood. A thousand. Do you imagine you can withstand them all?’Tool was silent for a moment. ‘Bakal, have you seen me fight?’The warrior bared his filed teeth. ‘None of us have. Again you evade my questions!’‘I have a question for you, Bakal.’‘Ah! Yes, ask it and hear how a Barghast answers what is asked of him!’‘Can the Senan afford to lose a thousand warriors?”

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

“The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.”

“Such is the vastness of his genius that he can outwit even himself.”

“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.”

“There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.”

“Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation.None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve.To face death is to stand alone.”

“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.”

“Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!' The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. 'Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?'Karsa grinned, 'Why, a civilized one.''Indeed!' Shadowthrone turned to Cotillion. 'And you doubted this one!”