Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Rely not upon conscience,’ Feren said, hearing the bitterness in her own voice and not caring. ‘It ever kneels to necessity.”

— Steven Erikson

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

305. “The Warrens of Magic dwelt in the beyond. Find the gate and nudge it open a crack. What leaks out is yours to shape. With these words a young woman set out on the path to sorcery. Open yourself to the Warren that comes to you – that finds you. Draw forth its power – as much as your body and soul are capable of containing – but remember, when the body fails, the gate closes.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

307. “Kadaspala worshipped colour. It was the gift of light; and in its tones, heavy and light, faint and rich, was painted all of life.”

— Steven Erikson

308. “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

309. “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

310. “He had been born into debt, as had his father and his father before him. Indenture and slavery were two words for the same thing.”

— Steven Erikson

311. “Some wounds never heal, and that man has just taken such a wounding.”

— Steven Erikson

312. “Laws are broken. Existence holds to no laws. Existence is what persists, and to persist is to struggle. In the end, the struggle fails.”

— Steven Erikson

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

320. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

322. “Sometimes,’ Brys ventured, ’when nothing can be shared except regret, then regret must serve as the place to begin. Reconciliation does not demand that one side surrender to the other. The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.”

— Steven Erikson

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

328. “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

329. “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

330. “Precipitous creature,′ Kruppe muttered, reaching for the mug of wine the man had left behind. ‘Ah, look at this,’ he said, frowning up at Crokus, ‘nigh two-thirds full. A potential waste!’ Kruppe drank it down in one swift gulp, then sighed. ‘Said potential averted, Dessembrae be praised.”

— Steven Erikson

331. “And in the city on all sides, the howling of the Hounds rose in an ear-shattering, soul-flailing crescendo. The Lord of Death had arrived, to walk the streets in the City of Blue Fire.”

— Steven Erikson

332. “The simple ones aren’t simple. The broken ones aren’t broken. They are rearranged.”

— Steven Erikson

333. “Besides, captain, have you no interest in seeing Lord Henarald’s expression when he learns that my master seeks to commission a sword?’ Galar Baras’s head snapped round in shock.”

— Steven Erikson

334. “The laws are not what they seem. Order is an illusion. It hides its lies in your very eyes, deceiving all they see. Because to see is to change that which is seen. No, none of us will ever see true. We cannot. It is impossible. I give you a life without answers, my children.”

— Steven Erikson

335. “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

336. “Even a man who has lived a life of sorrows will ask for one more day.”

— Steven Erikson

337. “Hate was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do. Draconus.”

— Steven Erikson

338. “Corporal Clasp crawled up beside him. ‘That’s one of those Fuckeral’s, isn’t it?”

— Steven Erikson

339. “Heed the lesson there, son.” “What lesson?” “Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.” “I want to be a soldier. A hero.” “You’ll grow out of it.”

— Steven Erikson

340. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

342. “The failing was that it was so easily won, and therefore became a thing of little worth for the recipient. Could no one see the hurt she felt, each and every time she was cast aside, sorely used, battered by rejection? Did they think she welcomed such feelings, the crushing despond of seeing the paucity of her worth?”

— Steven Erikson

343. “Evading responsibility was a proclivity of the human species, it seemed.”

— Steven Erikson

344. “He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.”

— Steven Erikson

345. “Young? He’d hear his own harsh, pained laugh. Oh, no, not this lass. She’s old. She walked under a blood-red moon in the dawn of time, did this one. Her face is the face of all that cannot be fathomed, and she’s looking you in the eye, Whiskeyjack, and you’ll never know what she’s thinking.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

347. “I am not empty inside. I am not at peace.’ The word seemed to startle him. ‘Peace? I spoke not of peace. In absence, Korya, there is yearning.’ His strange eyes focused on her. ‘Do you not so yearn?”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

349. “His dying shriek rose skyward.”

— Steven Erikson

350. “When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease.”

— Steven Erikson