Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

454. “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

455. “The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable?”

— Steven Erikson

456. “If holy words could not offer up an answer to despair, then what good were they? If the truths so revealed did not invite restitution, then their utterance was no more than a curse. And if the restitution is found not in the mortal realm, then we are invited to inaction, and indifference. Will you promise to a soul a reward buried in supposition? Are we to reach throughout our lives but never touch? Are we to dream and to hope, but never know?”

— Steven Erikson

457. “The game the mind must play to unleash destruction. He’d stood amidst the ranks more than once, sensing the soldiers alongside him seeking and finding that place in the mind, cold and silent, the place where husbands, fathers, wives and mothers became killers. And practice made it easier, each time. Until it becomes a place you never leave.”

— Steven Erikson

458. “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.”

— Steven Erikson

459. “Closing in a noose around her neck, the sound blocked the outside world – its air, its light.”

— Steven Erikson

460. “Paran could feel nothing but the white fire of vengeance, filling his mind, coruscating through his body.”

— Steven Erikson

461. “An unwillingness. I can carry no one else’s burden – not even for a moment. We are all pulled inside ourselves now, each alone...”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

463. “All that is worshipped is but a reflection of the worshipper. A single god, no matter how benign, is tortured into a multitude of masks, each shaped by the secret desires, hungers, fears and joys of the individual mortal, who but plays a game of obsequious approbation.”

— Steven Erikson

464. “Cultures can die, Hull, but the people live on, and what they carry within them are the seeds of rebirth –.”

— Steven Erikson

465. “The notion of freedom could make even peace and order seem oppressive, generate the suspicion of some hidden purpose, some vast deceit, some unspecified crime being perpetrated beyond human ken. That was a generous way of looking at it; the alternative was to acknowledge that humans were intrinsically conflicted, cursed with acquisitive addictions of the spirit.”

— Steven Erikson

466. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

468. “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

469. “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

470. “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

471. “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

472. “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

473. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

475. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

478. “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

479. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

481. “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

482. “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

483. “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

484. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

486. “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

487. “All those bickering worshippers, each one convinced their version is the right one. Imagine getting prayers from ten million believers, not one of them believing the same thing as the one kneeling beside him or her. Imagine all those Holy Books, not one of them agreeing on anything, yet all of them purporting to be the word of that one god. Imagine two armies annihilating each other, both in that god’s name. Who wouldn’t be driven mad by that?”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

490. “The longer one lives, the less valued is that life. Why is that?”

— Steven Erikson

491. “She saw her breath curl in a white stream, drawn inward to the darkness beyond.”

— Steven Erikson

492. “What are gods, after all, if not the perfect victims?”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

494. “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

495. “You are young,’ said Rise. ‘There is much for you to bear, but the gift of youth means you scarcely feel its weight. It distresses me to think that you are growing old before your time.”

— Steven Erikson

496. “There are poets who glory in their recounts of battle, of all those struggles so deftly ritualized. And they tend lovingly their garden of words, heaping high the harvest of glory, duty, courage and honour. But each of those luscious, stirring words is plucked from the same vine, and alas, it is a poisonous one. Name it necessity, and look well upon its spun strands, its fibrous belligerence.”

— Steven Erikson

497. “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

498. “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

499. “Leisure is not a relevant notion. Consider the weariness that often afflicts your kind, late in their lives. Then multiply that countless times. This is the burden of being long-lived.”

— Steven Erikson

500. “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