Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Death is not an unkind fate,’ Darist said above him. ‘If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief – your sorrow is for yourself. My words may displease you, but I speak from experience. I have felt the deaths of many of my kin, and I mourn the spaces in my life where they once stood. But such losses serve only to ease my own impending demise.”

— Steven Erikson

202. “Men. It’s all about saving face. Every argument, every duel, every battle, every war. You would level a world to keep from being made to look a fool. And so you shall.”

— Steven Erikson

203. “There is power in nature,’ Ilgast replied, ’and what is often forgotten is that nature lies within us as much as it does out there, amidst high grasses or shoreline. To heal is to draw across the divide; that and nothing more.”

— Steven Erikson

204. “War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity.”

— Steven Erikson

205. “And so we weep for the fallen. We weep for those yet to fall, and in war the screams are loud and harsh and in peace the wail is so drawn-out we tell ourselves we hear nothing.”

— Steven Erikson

206. “Humanity’s crisis is, it seems, its inability to appreciate gifts freely given.”

— Steven Erikson

207. “Around Karsa Orlong, I suspect, only Karsa Orlong has his way.”

— Steven Erikson

208. “When one loves all things of the world, when one has that gift of joy, it is not the armour against grief that you might think it to be. Such a person stands balanced on the edge of sadness – there is no other way for it, because to love as he does is to see clearly.”

— Steven Erikson

209. “The first law of the multitude is conformity. Civilization is the mechanism of controlling and maintaining that multitude. The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization’s last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.”

— Steven Erikson

210. “Where history means nothing. Lessons are forgotten. Memories – of humanity, of all that is humane – are lost.”

— Steven Erikson

211. “The final aspect of Kruppe to complete this dream’s array of those faces facing him which are Kruppe’s own. Or so you would proclaim. You are Humility but, as everyone knows, Humility has no place in Kruppe’s life, remember that. So here you will stay.”

— Steven Erikson

212. “Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything – love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.’ She.”

— Steven Erikson

213. “The frog atop the stack of coins dares not jump.”

— Steven Erikson

214. “Beware of shadows bearing gifts.”

— Steven Erikson

215. “Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of wilful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.”

— Steven Erikson

216. “The tall, leaning buildings to either side shrouded the narrow passage in shadow.”

— Steven Erikson

217. “The closest held secret is the one that never sours with age.”

— Steven Erikson

218. “There is only one thing worse than arguing with a drunk,’ Faradan Sort said, ’and that’s arguing with a drunk who’s right.”

— Steven Erikson

219. “Darkness was anathema to shadows.”

— Steven Erikson

220. “God, my children, is the wilderness.”

— Steven Erikson

221. “The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.”

— Steven Erikson

222. “Some roads, once set out upon, reveal no possible path but forward. Every other track is blocked by snarls of thorns, steaming fissures or rearing walls of stone. What waits at the far end of the forward path is unknown, and since knowledge itself may prove a curse, the best course is simply to place one foot in front of the other, and think not at all of fate or the cruel currents of destiny.”

— Steven Erikson

223. “A soldier knows but one truth, and that truth is, without faith, you are already as good as dead. Faith in the soldier at your side. But even more important – and no matter how delusional it is in truth – there is the faith that you cannot be killed. Those two and those two alone – they are the legs holding up every army.”

— Steven Erikson

224. “You are frowning. Why?’ ‘Well, I’ve already killed a god today,’ Iron Bars said. ‘If I’d known this was going to be a day for killing gods, I might have paced myself better.”

— Steven Erikson

225. “No, in an existence bound with true meaning and purpose, oblivion should ever arrive unexpected, unanticipated and unseen. One moment racing full tilt, the next, gone.”

— Steven Erikson

226. “And perhaps that is the final, most devastating truth. The gods care nothing for ascetic impositions on mortal behaviour. Care nothing for rules of conduct, for the twisted morals of temple priests and monks. Perhaps indeed they laugh at the chains we wrap around ourselves – our endless, insatiable need to find flaws within the demands of life. Or perhaps they do not laugh, but rage at us. Perhaps our denial of life’s celebration is our greatest insult to those whom we worship and serve.”

— Steven Erikson

227. “She was thinking about how a mind could turn to stone, the patterns solid and immovable in the face of seemingly unbearable pressures, and the way dust trickled down faint as whispers, unnoticed by any.”

— Steven Erikson

228. “Is that all we mortals are? The victims of tortured irony to amuse an insane murder of gods?’ ‘A murder of crows, a murder of gods – I like that, lass. As for tortured irony, more like exquisite irony.”

— Steven Erikson

229. “Lost ages are neither more nor less profound than the one we live in right now.”

— Steven Erikson

230. “Stone, sea, forest, city – and every creature that ever lived – all share the same struggle. Being resists unbeing. Order wars against the chaos of dissolution, of disorder.”

— Steven Erikson

231. “Bad tactics, and whoever this Caladan Brood is, he’s shown himself adept at making us pay for our mistakes.” “Caladan Brood,” Calot murmured. “I swear I’ve heard that name somewhere before. Odd that I’ve never given it much thought.” Tattersail’s eyes narrowed on Tayschrenn. Calot was right: the name of the man commanding the Tiste Andii alongside the Crimson Guard did sound familiar – but in an old way, echoing ancient legends, perhaps, or some epic poem.”

— Steven Erikson

232. “History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity.”

— Steven Erikson

233. “Is your friendship such a burden, then?” “Some burdens are willingly embraced.”

— Steven Erikson

234. “Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.”

— Steven Erikson

235. “Indolence takes many forms, but it comes to every civilization that has outlived its will. You know that as well as I. In this case it was an indolence characterized by a pursuit of knowledge, a frenzied search for answers to everything, no matter the value of such answers. A civilization can as easily drown in what it knows as in what it doesn’t know.”

— Steven Erikson

236. “The two men, Tiste and Azathanai, had begun forging something between them, and whatever it was, it was unafraid of truths.”

— Steven Erikson

237. “As he made his way back to his estate, Baruk recalled his lone meeting with Vorcan, only a few nights after her awakening. She had entered the chamber with her usual feline grace. The wounds she had borne were long healed and she had found a new set of clothes, loose and.”

— Steven Erikson

238. “Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.”

— Steven Erikson

239. “Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics.”

— Steven Erikson

240. “The only consistent narrative we possess is one that we share with every other life-form: we are born, we live, and then we die.”

— Steven Erikson

241. “Life was a war against a thousand enemies, from the sustenance carved from nature to the insanity of a people’s will to do wrong in the name of right.”

— Steven Erikson

242. “Laws decide wich forms of oppression are allowed, Lord. And because of that, those laws are servants to those in power, for whom oppression is given as a right over those who have little or no power.”

— Steven Erikson

243. “Keep repeating the exercise of grief and it loses meaning, it becomes rote, false, a game of self-delusion, self-indulgence. A way of never getting over anything, ever.”

— Steven Erikson

244. “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 weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.’ ‘With words.’ ‘Indeed, with words. Form an opinion, say it often enough and pretty soon everyone’s saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with weapons of fear. At which point, words become useless and you’re left with a fight to the death.”

— Steven Erikson

245. “Introspection was an act of supreme courage, one that few could manage. But when all one had left to stir was a heap of crumbled bones, there was nothing else one could do. Fleeing the scene only prolonged the ordeal. Memories clung to the horrors in his wake, and the only true escape was a plunge into madness – and madness was not a thing he could simply choose for himself. More’s the pity. No, the sharper the inner landscape, the fiercer the sanity.”

— Steven Erikson

246. “Kill, thought Ditch, nodding, kill, yes, I understand. I do. Kill, for her. Kill. And he found that the word itself, yes, the word itself, knew how to smile.”

— Steven Erikson

247. “Some things went beyond a single man’s life, and maybe justice existed outside the minds of humanity, beyond even the hungry eyes of gods and goddesses, a thing shining and pure and final.”

— Steven Erikson

248. “Names are not for the asking, mortal. Names are earned.”

— Steven Erikson

249. “A civilization was the means by which too many people could live together despite their mutual hatred.”

— Steven Erikson

250. “Crowd control.’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘That’s all civilization is, T’riss. A means by which we manage the proliferation of our kind. It increases in complexity the more of us there are. Laws keep us muzzled and punishment delivers the necessary message when those laws are broken. Civilizations in decline are notable when certain of their members escape justice, and do so with impunity.”

— Steven Erikson