Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “It must be taken as given that a man who happens to be the world’s most powerful, most terrible, most deadly sorceror, must have a woman at his side. But it does not follow, my children, that a woman of similar proportions requires a man at hers.”

— Steven Erikson

452. “He strode down the empty street, cleaving the low-lying mists that swirled like incandescent cloaks in the gaslight.”

— Steven Erikson

453. “The detonation was deafening, the blast a bruised gout of flame that drove back the airborne sand and the wind carrying it, and flung the attackers and their mounts like a god’s hand, backward onto the road and off the sides.”

— Steven Erikson

454. “And at that instant, Ivis, so brightly painted in triumph, does the world freeze? Does time itself cease, nothing crawling on; not a single moment following in its usual tumble? But what world offers this impossibility? Only the one begat in a mind, and then raised in chains, never to be set free. The fashioning of nostalgia, my friend, imprisons us.”

— Steven Erikson

455. “If there was neither a time before nor a time after, then was not the moment of creation eternal and yet for ever instantaneous?”

— Steven Erikson

456. “The blade slid through the energy. Unaffected, the power swept over, then into Paran. Blinded, he screamed as bitter cold lanced through him, shattering his thoughts, his sense of self. An invisible hand closed around his soul. Mine! The word rang in his head, triumphant and filled with savage glee. You are mine!”

— Steven Erikson

457. “That is all faith is, you know. Pity for our souls.”

— Steven Erikson

458. “Dragonflies big enough to ride – imagine whizzing through the clouds, looking down on everything! Seeing how beautiful it all was, and then dropping hundreds of bombs on it.”

— Steven Erikson

459. “When robbed, the rich cry out for protection and prosecution. When stealing, they expect the judiciary to look the other way.”

— Steven Erikson

460. “An end to my fear of being alone. An end to a soul’s solitude, when death at last arrives. There is something in that, something in there, that comforts.”

— Steven Erikson

461. “Strange how the past was remade to suit the present.”

— Steven Erikson

462. “Money is sleight of hand,’ Tehol said, nodding. ‘Unless you’ve got diamonds in your hands. Then it’s not just an idea any more. If you want to know the cheat behind the whole game, it’s right there, lasses. Even when money’s just an idea, it has power. Only it’s not real power. Just the promise of power. But that promise is enough so long as everyone keeps pretending it’s real. Stop pretending and it all falls apart.”

— Steven Erikson

463. “Importance lies solely in the deeds done, the goals achieved. Time is preparation, nothing more. One prepares for as long as is required. To do this is to accept that planning begins at birth. You are born and before all else you are plunged into shadow, wrapped inside the holy ambivalence, there to suckle sweet sustenance.”

— Steven Erikson

464. “Every worthwhile plan is diabolical.”

— Steven Erikson

465. “That’s the thing with Just Wars – they never end and never will because Justice is a weak god with too many names.”

— Steven Erikson

466. “Laughing, he’d flung dense clouds of earth and stone skyward to blind them.”

— Steven Erikson

467. “Kulp saw something crumbling into ruins behind the lad’s light-blue eyes.”

— Steven Erikson

468. “And so, yet again, we crush the blossom in our hand, lift our gaze from the tumbling petals, and ask the world, ‘Where, then, is this beauty you promised?”

— Steven Erikson

469. “If indeed the universe posessed a mind, it was a cluttered one. And if corners such as these thrived in that mind, then the custodian was asleep, or, perhaps, drunk.”

— Steven Erikson

470. “And we’re not talking mild snoring, either. Imagine being chained to the floor of a cave, with the tide crashing in, louder, louder, louder –.”

— Steven Erikson

471. “The door flew open, carrying into the room a gust of steamy air and then Trotts.”

— Steven Erikson

472. “Serious people never stopped waging their war on joy and pleasure, and they were both relentless and tireless.”

— Steven Erikson

473. “Cutter rubbed at his face. He needed a shave. And a bath. And clean, new clothes. And a purpose in life.”

— Steven Erikson

474. “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.”

— Steven Erikson

475. “Never make a roadblock of yourself on trouble’s road. No, make yourself a bridge instead, with stones slick as grease.”

— Steven Erikson

476. “Bodily functions are a wonderful, indeed sensual, thing. Why, the mere blowing clear of a nose is a potential source of ecstasy, once you grasp its phlegmatic allure.”

— Steven Erikson

477. “The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.”

— Steven Erikson

478. “The thief dragged his attention from the wooden block. ‘I’m listening.”

— Steven Erikson

479. “What holds me to life, if not desire? What vaster power exists? With it, I swear, I feel I can defy the inevitable. Weapon and shield, companion and ally, enough to make the world back away, enough to surmount the highest walls and cross the deepest chasms. Desire, you stand in place of a lover’s arms, and make your embrace such dark comfort. She.”

— Steven Erikson

480. “She held herself straight, moving slowly, making her way towards the head of the column. And of all the journeys she had undertaken, since the very beginning, this one – from the back of the column to its head – was the longest one she had ever travelled. And, as ever, she travelled it alone.”

— Steven Erikson

481. “Mammot’s body withered beneath the clambering, frenzied attack. Flesh was ripped away, fires lancing, boring holes through him. He was driven to his knees, a vortex swirling like madness around him.”

— Steven Erikson

482. “The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god’s name. And see in themselves no conflict, no matter how bloodstained their hands.”

— Steven Erikson

483. “There are no singular tales. A life in solitude is a life rushing to death. But a blind man will never rush; he but feels his way, as befits an uncertain world.”

— Steven Erikson

484. “It’s just the place we chose. To do what’s right. But then, maybe that alone gives reason to take us down, to destroy us.”

— Steven Erikson

485. “He’d seen enough of life to know he wouldn’t miss it much. His only regret was the grief his death would level upon those who cared for him. Venes.”

— Steven Erikson

486. “None the less, you have my leave, if only that you might ensure your spies are made aware of precisely when her spies make their report, so that they in turn may report to you and you may then report to me. Although what I am to do with such knowledge will no doubt escape me, given that the event initiating these flurries of reporting is none other than the one occurring right now in this room.”

— Steven Erikson

487. “Never bargain with a man who has nothing to lose.”

— Steven Erikson

488. “Some roads were easier to leave than others. Many walked to seek the future, but found only the past. Others sought the past, to make it new once more, and discovered that the past was nothing like the one they’d imagined.”

— Steven Erikson

489. “But even that word, ‘stranger’, arose from a time of kin-hearths and a half-dozen huts marking the very limits of a people, a realm, a temporary nest in the seasonal rounds – when we lived in nature and nature lived in us and no other divide existed beyond what was known and what was unknown.”

— Steven Erikson

490. “The panic that had filled him was subsiding, perhaps having burned itself out.”

— Steven Erikson

491. “Lying with lovers also belonged to night, and that made sense, for it was in the midst of true darkness that the first fire of life was born, flickering awake to drive back the unchanging absence of light. To lie with a lover was to celebrate the creation of fire. From this in the flesh to the world beyond.”

— Steven Erikson

492. “Dour music has its own beauty, for the song of ruin is most fertile.”

— Steven Erikson

493. “Do you like shiny things? I do, even though they hurt my eyes. Maybe it’s because they hurt my eyes. What do you think?’ ‘I don’t think much of anything any more, lad.’ ‘I think you do too much.’ ‘Oh, really?’ ‘Father thinks the same. You think about things there’s no point in thinking about. It makes no difference. But I know why you do.’ ‘You do?’ The lad nodded. ‘The same reason I like shiny things.”

— Steven Erikson

494. “Was not love its own shock? A match to that of death? Did it not take the eyes first? Such reverberations as to weaken the bravest man or woman – its trembling echoes never left a mortal soul.”

— Steven Erikson

495. “Every artist was haunted by lies. Every artist fought to find truths. Every artist failed. Some turned back, embracing those comforting lies. Others took their own lives in despair. Still others drank themselves into the barrow, or poisoned everyone who drew near enough to touch, to wound. Some simply gave up, and wasted away in obscurity. A few discovered their own mediocrity, and this was the cruellest discovery of all. None found their way to the truths.”

— Steven Erikson

496. “In natural justice, Arathan, the weak cannot hide, unless we grant them the privilege. And understand, it is ever a privilege, for which the weak should be eternally grateful.”

— Steven Erikson

497. “Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they see how those others are deceived and made into fools because they chose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.”

— Steven Erikson

498. “Shall I loose the fleas on my head to rend your worthless flesh from your jellied bones?”

— Steven Erikson

499. “Logic is simply the language of convenient rationalization in a pseudo-science-loving civilization.”

— Steven Erikson

500. “I have tolerated the deceitful and the malicious for long enough. My sword shall now answer them.”

— Steven Erikson