Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Duty and courage had been made animate, and this was all the T’lan Imass were, and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, without choice, such virtues as duty and courage were transformed into empty, worthless words. Without mortality, hovering like an unseen sword overhead, meaning was without relevance, no matter the nature – or even the motivation behind – an act. Any act.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

303. “How perfect is running? This grand delusion of flight? Away from our demons, ever away, until even the self sobs loose, spins lost in our wake. Perfect, oh yes. And a thing to despise. No distance can win an escape; no speed can outrun this self and all its host of troubles. It’s only the sweet exhaustion that follows that we so cherish. An exhaustion so pure it is as close to dying as we can get without actually doing so.”

— Steven Erikson

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

314. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

316. “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

317. “Take a thousand soldiers. Four hundred will stand in a fight but do nothing. Two hundred will run given the chance. Another hundred will get confused. That leaves three hundred you can count on. Your task in commanding that thousand is all down to knowing where to put that three hundred.”

— Steven Erikson

318. “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

319. “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

320. “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

321. “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

322. “He was asked, then, who was this Winged Grief? And Gallan said, ‘There is but one left who would dare command me. One who would not weep and yet had taken into his soul a people’s sorrow, a realm’s sorrow. His name was Silchas Ruin.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

325. “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

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. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

329. “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

330. “You and I, we have seen all of this before, the manner in which two opposing forces – no matter how disparate their origins, no matter how righteously one begins the conflict – end up becoming virtually identical to each other.”

— Steven Erikson

331. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

333. “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

334. “Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets’ treasured value.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

336. “Freedom – she understood now – was something so long lost among humans that they had forgotten what it felt like. Bend to your labours! Grasp those coins! Keep the doors locked and fires raging to empty the shadows behind you! Make your brothers and sisters kneel before you, to serve your pleasures. Are you free? You don’t remember the truth of what once was – of what you all so willingly surrendered.”

— Steven Erikson

337. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

339. “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

340. “His dying shriek rose skyward.”

— Steven Erikson

341. “The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

343. “It seems, captain, that as her power grows, her tolerance diminishes. They are like lodestones, pushing each other away. Does power not grant immunity? Does power not strengthen the armour; does power not find assurance in itself? Can it be that those who hold the most power also know the greatest fear?”

— Steven Erikson

344. “The creature spun, tumbling, then twisted round to face its attacker, rage blazing in its skull.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

346. “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

347. “He had let age take hold of him, as if ennui was an old man’s final gift to himself – the blessed embrace of indifference in the guise of wisdom.”

— Steven Erikson

348. “The end of the world is announced with a kind word.”

— Steven Erikson

349. “Guilt is the first weed we pluck, to keep the garden pretty and smelling sweet.”

— Steven Erikson

350. “I was once told that dreams are worthy things,” said Emancipor, “even if they end up in misery and unending horror.” “Ah, and who told you that?” He shrugged. “My wife.”

— Steven Erikson