Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Some wounds never heal, and that man has just taken such a wounding.”

— Steven Erikson

302. “Fallen. Who tracks our footsteps, I wonder? We who are the forgotten, the discounted and the ignored. When the path is failure, it is never willingly taken. The fallen. Why does my heart weep for them? Not them but us, for most assuredly I am counted among them. Slaves, serfs, nameless peasants and labourers, the blurred faces in the crowd – just a smear on memory, a scuffing of feet down the side passages of history.”

— Steven Erikson

303. “At some point, no matter how repressive the regime, the citizenry will come to comprehend the vast power in their hands. The destitute, the Indebted, the beleaguered middle classes; in short, the myriad victims. Control was sleight of hand trickery, and against a hundred thousand defiant citizens, it stood no real chance.”

— Steven Erikson

304. “Gifts are rarely appreciated,′ Arathan said, and in his mind he was remembering his first night with Feren. ‘And the one who receives knows only confusion. At first. And then hunger... for more. And in that hunger, there is expectation, and so the gift ceases being a gift, and becomes payment, and to give itself becomes a privilege and to receive it a right. By this all sentiment sours.”

— Steven Erikson

305. “Odd, isn’t it, how we now deliver upon another nation what we would not have done to ourselves.”

— Steven Erikson

306. “The sky cares nothing for you, dear one. The stars don’t even see you.”

— Steven Erikson

307. “For one who is poison, there is great pleasure in anguish. In wild longing. In the meaningless explorations of delighted surrender, subjugation – well, subjugation that was in truth domination – no point in being coy here. I surrender in order to demand. Relinquish in order to rule.”

— Steven Erikson

308. “She’d forgotten what love could do, as it threaded its roots through her entire soul, as it tugged and pulled at her thoughts, obsession ripening like seductive fruit. She felt only its life, thickening within her, claiming all she was.”

— Steven Erikson

309. “Then darkness swept in around him and he knew no more.”

— Steven Erikson

310. “And then he saw the chains, snapping down through the clouds to crack thunderously on the horizon. Hundreds of chains, impossibly huge, black, whipping in the air with explosions of red dust, crisscrossing the sky. Horror filled his soul.”

— Steven Erikson

311. “Tool interrupted, ’do you mock me, or your own ignorance? Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish.”

— Steven Erikson

312. “Look not to our unknown benefactor for salvation. This is humanity’s war upon itself and the only salvation possible must be found in the eyes of our brother, our sister, our neighbor. Do find the courage, my beloved friend, to meet that gaze.”

— Steven Erikson

313. “A true believer, indeed, need never draw a weapon, need never rise in argument, or howl in fury, or make fists, or roll in a mob to crush some helpless, innocent enemy. A true believer needs none of those things. How much of the world insists on living this lie?”

— Steven Erikson

314. “In natural justice, Arathan, the weak cannot hide, unless we grant them the privilege. And understand, it is ever a privilege, for wich the weak should be eternally grateful. At any given moment, should the strong will it, they can swing a sword and end the life of the weak. And that will be today’s lesson. Forbearance.”

— Steven Erikson

315. “Bah! You’re not worth the effort anyway!’ And all at once she collapsed into a heap of spiders that scurried in all directions.”

— Steven Erikson

316. “The past is a demon that not even death can shake.”

— Steven Erikson

317. “Instead, we fell inside ourselves, ever deeper, that endless eating and spitting out and eating all we spat out – this is the seductive sustenance of hatred and spite, of rage and vengeance.”

— Steven Erikson

318. “Then we’re dead all that much sooner. So it goes.”

— Steven Erikson

319. “They are human, after all, and it is human nature to transform loss into a virtue. So that it might be lived with, so that it might be justified.”

— Steven Erikson

320. “Compassion. Love. It was not civilization that birthed these gentle gifts... A civilization was the means by which too many people could live together despite their mutual hatred. And those moments where love and community burgeoned forth, the cynics descended like vultures eager to feed, and the skies soured, and the moment died away.”

— Steven Erikson

321. “Anarchists live in fear and long for death, because they despair of seeing in others the very virtues they lack in themselves. In this manner, they take pleasure in sowing destruction, if only to match their inner landscape of ruin.”

— Steven Erikson

322. “I would say, most of the time, yes. Fear that our opinions might be challenged. 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

323. “The curse of great minds. Arriving young to an idea, surviving the siege that invariably assails it, then, finally, standing guard on the ramparts long after the war’s over, weapons dull in leaden hands.”

— Steven Erikson

324. “My God,” Hadrian said. “They finally did it! All those oh-so-cute-my-cuddly-kitten-here’s-a-pic bastard! They finally went and did it!”

— Steven Erikson

325. “The truth of futility was the hardest truth of all, and for those clear-eyed enough to see it, there was no escape.”

— Steven Erikson

326. “Why is it, I wonder, that organizations such as yours are invariably run by pitiful human failures? By small-minded psychotics and perverts. All bullied as children, of course. Or abused by twisted parents – I’m sure you have terrible tales to confess, of your miserable youth. And now the power is in your hands, and oh how the rest of us suffer.”

— Steven Erikson

327. “Strings glared at his new corporal. ‘Where’d you learn that skill?’ The man shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Don’t like getting hit.’ ‘Well, do you ever counter-attack?’ Tarr frowned. ‘Sure. When they’re tired.”

— Steven Erikson

328. “Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons – they can’t be danced round. They can’t be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars – they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.”

— Steven Erikson

329. “They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?”

— Steven Erikson

330. “Sites of battle held on to a madness, as if the blood that had soaked into the soil remembered pain and terror and held locked within it the echoes of screams and death cries.”

— Steven Erikson

331. “To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.”

— Steven Erikson

332. “A wayward wind drew a wintry breath across the scene with a sound like a gasp, shivering the grasses.”

— Steven Erikson

333. “Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want.”

— Steven Erikson

334. “People suffered, many died, but they struggled through and they survived.”

— Steven Erikson

335. “Victory is an illusion. In all things.”

— Steven Erikson

336. “Love could be such a squalid emotion: burning bright in the midst of pathos, the subject of pity and contempt, it blazed with brilliant stupidity all the same.”

— Steven Erikson

337. “Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate. But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation.”

— Steven Erikson

338. “This, then, is friendship. A family you choose. What you give to it, you give freely. What you withhold from it, measures its depth.”

— Steven Erikson

339. “Something awaits me. I do not mean this mad Emperor. Something else. Answer me this. How does one measure time?’ ‘By the course of the sun, the phases of the moon, the wheel of the stars. And, of course, in cities such as this one, the sounding of a bell at fixed intervals – a wholly absurd conceit and, indeed, one that is spiritually debilitating.”

— Steven Erikson

340. “We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.”

— Steven Erikson

341. “You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.”

— Steven Erikson

342. “Compassion is never enough. Nor is the hunger for vengeance. But, for now, for what awaits us, perhaps they will do. We are the Bonehunters, and sail to another name. Beyond Aren, beyond Raraku and beyond Y’Ghatan, we now cross the world to find the first name that will be truly our own. Shared by none other. We sail to give answer.”

— Steven Erikson

343. “Do you truly believe suicide belongs solely to the one taking his or her own life? All that rot about selfishness and self-hatred? The lies we tell ourselves to absolve us of all blame, of all the roles that we played in that wretched death?”

— Steven Erikson

344. “Rigga, Riggalai the Seer, the wax-witch who trapped souls in candles and burned them. Souls devoured in flame –.”

— Steven Erikson

345. “Light exploded behind Felisin’s eyes as she sprawled sideways.”

— Steven Erikson

346. “His agonized scream rode the cascading waves of power as they swept across the terrace.”

— Steven Erikson

347. “Peace reigned in silence, inside and out, in isolation and exhaustion.”

— Steven Erikson

348. “Very well, permit me, if you will, on this night. To break your hearts once more.”

— Steven Erikson

349. “Desires should never be justified,′ Tehol said, wagging a finger. ‘All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.”

— Steven Erikson

350. “Is the universe holographic? Probably. Get microscopic enough and you start seeing pixels. I don’t know about you, but that makes me laugh. Until I think about how easy it is to hack a program. Any program.”

— Steven Erikson