Steven Erikson quotes - page 6

Honour cannot be hoarded. Integrity cannot adorn a room. There is no courage in gold. (Steven Erikson)
Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. View quote
Steven Erikson
Words are like coin-it pays to hoard." "Until you die on a bed of gold," Paran said. View quote
Steven Erikson
Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want. View quote
Steven Erikson
Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.' ‘Temper, you mean.' ‘No, temperature. It's getting chilly. View quote
Steven Erikson
In war everyone loses. This brutal truth can be seen in the eyes of every solider in every world. View quote
Steven Erikson
Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself. View quote
Steven Erikson
You cannot be remade unless you are first broken. View quote
Steven Erikson
You mortals baffle me. View quote
Steven Erikson
What worth peace when it was maintained by threat? It was only the fearful who knelt in worship before order, and Galar refused to leave in fear. View quote
Steven Erikson
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. (Steven Erikson)
Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides. The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all. View quote
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?”. View quote
Steven Erikson
The Empress expects obedience of her servants, and demands loyalty. View quote
Steven Erikson
What do you mean by a tyrant? View quote
Steven Erikson
I've spoken often of how the fantasy genre is able to, with the greatest freedom among all the genres, take a metaphor and make it real. But of course that's only the starting point. View quote
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. View quote
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.”. View quote
Steven Erikson
There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself." "With words. View quote
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. View quote
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. (Steven Erikson)
The heart of wisdom is tolerance. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Steven Erikson
You always fashioned yourself as the Empire's harshest Fist, didn't you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty's a virtue. View quote
Steven Erikson