“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.”

“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 ...”

“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”

“Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment is is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling."Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished? Where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur. Ourselves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion--no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe sees before him."~Kruppe,”

“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?”

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

“Fallen. Who tracks our footsteps, I wonder? We who are the forgotten, the discounted and the ignored. When the path is failure, it is never willingly taken. The fallen. Why does my heart weep for them? Not them but us, for most assuredly I am counted among them. Slaves, serfs, nameless peasants and labourers, the blurred faces in the crowd—just a smear on memory, a scuffing of feet down the side passages of history.Can one stop, can one turn and force one’s eyes to pierce the gloom? And see the fallen? Can one ever see the fallen? And if so, what emotion is born in that moment?There were tears on his cheeks, dripping down onto his chafed hands. He knew the answer to that question, knife-sharp and driven deep, and the answer was…recognition.”