Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Never be too easy with the knowledge you possess. Words are like coin – it pays to hoard.” “Until you die on a bed of gold,” Paran said.”

— Steven Erikson

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

307. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

312. “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

313. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

315. “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

316. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

318. “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

319. “His dying shriek rose skyward.”

— Steven Erikson

320. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

322. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

329. “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

330. “Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.”

— Steven Erikson

331. “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

332. “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

333. “You’ll not have me, Lord, because you can’t.”

— Steven Erikson

334. “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

335. “People who make up their minds about something never listen to advice – especially when it’s to the contrary.”

— Steven Erikson

336. “And somehow they would be less than human then. The game the mind must play to unleash destruction.”

— Steven Erikson

337. “Hands were such extraordinary tools, she mused. Tools, weapons, clumsy and deft, numb and tactile. Among tribal hunters, they could speak, a flurry of gestures eloquent in silence. But they could not taste. Could not hear. Could not weep. For all that, they killed so easily.”

— Steven Erikson

338. “They didn’t shelter their own, didn’t feed their own, didn’t heal their own, and yet, in the midst of all this inhumanity, they held themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization.”

— Steven Erikson

339. “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

340. “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

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

— Steven Erikson

342. “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

343. “A savage awareness seemed to ride the spinning sand, reaching relentlessly past the folds of their telaban, a thousand abrasive fingers clawing paths across their skin. Loose cloth and rope ends spiked upward, whipping with urgent rhythm. The roar filled the air, filled their skulls.”

— Steven Erikson

344. “War needs no gods, only mortal contestants, two enemies and whatever reasons they invent in order to justify killing each other.”

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

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

— Steven Erikson

348. “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

349. “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

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

— Steven Erikson