Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious selfrighteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgement quickly follows, yielding dire punishment, inflicting general terror and paranoia, eventually culminating in revolt, leading to chaos, then dissolution, and thus, the end of civilization.”

— Steven Erikson

152. “Many dreams are forgotten upon awakening, yes?’ He glanced away from her appallingly open expression. ‘But not memories,’ he said. ‘They just rise up, like the sun. Each morning, after a moment’s bliss, they return. Like ghosts. Demons. They return, Vastala, with all the fangs and claws of the truth. We awaken to what’s real, what was and can’t be taken back.’ She.”

— Steven Erikson

153. “As far as Gu’Rull could determine, the only virtue humans possessed was a talent for starting over, with stern resolve restored in the sudden glow of renewed optimism, in complete disregard of whatever lessons past failures might offer. And he had no choice but to acknowledge the power of that virtue. It is contingent upon collective amnesia, but as everyone knows, stupidity needs no excuse to repeat itself.”

— Steven Erikson

154. “We are not simple creatures. You dream that with memories will come knowledge, and from knowledge, understanding. But for every answer you find, a thousand new questions arise. All that we are has lead us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.”

— Steven Erikson

155. “It’s the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance.”

— Steven Erikson

156. “We each fashion our “others” and chart the course of our lives as that eternal campaign, seasons of gain, seasons of loss. Battles and wounds and triumphs and bitter defeats. In comforts we fashion our strongholds. In convictions we occupy our fortifications. In violence we forge our peace. In peace, we win desolation.”

— Steven Erikson

157. “Witness? Yes, you are witness. Even so, what I, Karsa Orlong, shall shape, you cannot imagine. No one can.”

— Steven Erikson

158. “The trust I have... for some people... comes down to how well I know them, and then it’s a matter of my trusting them to do what I think they’re going to do.”

— Steven Erikson

159. “What I was is not what I am. Two men, identical faces, but different eyes. In what they have seen, in what they reflect upon the world.”

— Steven Erikson

160. “We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.”

— Steven Erikson

161. “Only a soul that has surrendered utterly gives up on notions of redemption.”

— Steven Erikson

162. “We are, all of us, nothing but impostors to our cause, because the cause we espouse is nothing more than the blind we raise to hide our own ambitions.”

— Steven Erikson

163. “A celebration of insignificance. Is that all we are in the end?”

— Steven Erikson

164. “Unwitnessed. There was crime in that notion. A profound injustice against which he railed. In silence. Like every other soldier in the Bonehunters. Maybe. No, I am not mistaken – I see something in their eyes. I can see it. We rail against injustice, yes. That what we do will be seen by no-one. Our fate unmeasured.”

— Steven Erikson

165. “And here is my secret. Heed this well. The weapon of the godless needs no hand to wield it. The weapon of the godless wields itself. It is without fear. It is empty of guilt and disdainful of retribution. It is all that and more, but one thing it is not: a liar. No slaying in the name of a higher power, no promises of redemption. It will not cloak brutality in the zeal that justifies, that absolves. And this is why it is the most horrifying weapon of all.”

— Steven Erikson

166. “I have to feel what I’m writing, right down to the core.”

— Steven Erikson

167. “We don’t even know where we are. What realm is this? What world lies beyond this forest? Cousin, we have nowhere else to go.’ ‘Nowhere, and anywhere. In the circumstances, Nimander, the former leads to the latter, like reaching a door everyone believes barred, locked tight, and lo, it opens wide at the touch. Nowhere and anywhere are states of mind.”

— Steven Erikson

168. “Unwitnessed... is what happens when nobody survives.”

— Steven Erikson

169. “And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that – events beyond the will of the gods – and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.”

— Steven Erikson

170. “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.”

— Steven Erikson

171. “The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance. He.”

— Steven Erikson

172. “A pang of regret hit Tattersail upon meeting the boy’s bright, eager gaze. Chances were, he’d be dead within a few months. The Empire had many crimes staining its banner, but this was the worst of them.”

— Steven Erikson

173. “Necessity, now there’s a word to feed every outrage on decency.”

— Steven Erikson

174. “To mourn is to feel a flower’s slow death, hill bear. To bed a man is to recall the flower’s bright glory.”

— Steven Erikson

175. “A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilization. Thus, a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.”

— Steven Erikson

176. “Even the beasts succumb to such aggression. Killers among your kind, among my kind, are just that – the savagery of beasts mated with intelligence, or what passes for intelligence. They dwell in a murky world, sir, confused and fearful, stained dark with envy and malice. And in the end, they die as they lived. Frightened and alone, with every memory of power revealed as illusion, as farce.”

— Steven Erikson

177. “Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present. With its seemingly endless excesses, its ravenous appetites. Ever the same rules, ever the same game.”

— Steven Erikson

178. “Worry not. Sing your songs with all the earnestness you possess. What is talent but the tongue that never ceases its wag? Look upon us poets and see how we are as dogs in the sun, licking our own behinds with such tender love. Naught else afflicts us but the vapours of our own worries.”

— Steven Erikson

179. “Inequity, else how can power be assessed, how can the gifts of privilege be valued? For there to be rich, there must be poor, and more of the latter than the former.”

— Steven Erikson

180. “He reached out and laid a hand against Quick Ben’s brow, then grunted. ‘He’s on his way back. It’s protective sorcery that’s keeping him asleep.’ ‘Can you speed things up?’ ‘Sure.’ The healer slapped the wizard. ‘Quick Ben’s eyes snapped open.”

— Steven Erikson

181. “With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it.”

— Steven Erikson

182. “Kruppe nodded. “Kruppe is no fool, K’rul. He openly opposes no one, and he finds power a thing to be avoided at all costs.”

— Steven Erikson

183. “We destroy to create. But we deny the value of everything we destroy, which serves to make its destruction easier on our consciences. All that we reshape to suit us is diminished, its original beauty for ever lost. We have no value system that does not beggar the world, that does not slaughter the beasts we share it with – as if we are the gods.”

— Steven Erikson

184. “That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. Quote me, Duiker, and your work’s done.”

— Steven Erikson

185. “Before Lord Anomander Rake the crowd in the street shrank back, all thoughts of festivity swept away.”

— Steven Erikson

186. “What the soul can house, flesh cannot fathom. – The Reve of Fener – Imarak, First Destriant – MoI 657.”

— Steven Erikson

187. “Diversity is worth celebrating, Humbrall Taur, for it is the birthplace of wisdom.”

— Steven Erikson

188. “Knowledge is not enough. It never is. It’s the capacity to do something with that knowledge. To do it perfectly. Absolute timing. With devastating consequences.”

— Steven Erikson

189. “The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief. But there are other anguishes, many others. They unfold as they will, and to dwell within them is to understand nothing.”

— Steven Erikson

190. “Hope dies to ten thousand small cuts.”

— Steven Erikson

191. “Through the gamut of life we struggled for control, for a means to fashion the world around us, an eternal, hopeless hunt for the privilege of being able to predict the shape of our lives.”

— Steven Erikson

192. “Everything worth fighting for is gained without fighting.”

— Steven Erikson

193. “What I, Karsa Orlong, shall shape, you cannot imagine. No one can.”

— Steven Erikson

194. “Tradition was the last bastion of fools.”

— Steven Erikson

195. “I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea.’ Nimander.”

— Steven Erikson

196. “Our education system no longer teaches empathy,’ Sam said. ‘Now, if everybody in college had to take a minor in Literature, the world would be a better place.”

— Steven Erikson

197. “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.”

— Steven Erikson

198. “Words need not be spoken aloud, friend, to prove unwelcome. I but answered my own thoughts.”

— Steven Erikson

199. “Do not flee us. Do not flee this moment, this scene. Do not confuse dislike and abhorrence with angry denial of truths you do not wish to see. I accept your horror and expect no forgiveness. But if you deny, I name you coward. And I have had my fill of cowards.”

— Steven Erikson

200. “We are not born innocent, simply unmeasured... Until the outside is inflicted on the inside, then the brutal war begins. We are not born to compassion either – large wide eyes and sweet demeanor notwithstanding.”

— Steven Erikson