Do I see control on all sides, or the illusion of control?” List’s face twisted slightly. “Sometimes the two are one and the same. In terms of their effect, I mean. The only difference – or so Coltaine says – is that when you bloody the real thing, it absorbs the damage, while the other shatters.

— Steven Erikson

Steven Erikson Quotes

I have to feel what I’m writing, right down to the core.

— Steven Erikson

For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives.

— Steven Erikson

About Stories

Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love all manner of sacrifice could be borne.

— Steven Erikson

Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.

— Steven Erikson

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things – once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

— Steven Erikson

Do mortal fools still measure the increments leading to their deaths, wagering pleasures against costs, persisting in the delusion that deeds have value, that the world and all the gods sit in judgment over every decision made or not made?

— Steven Erikson

Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.

— Steven Erikson

You are very easily exasperated, my dear. If you’re a leaf trembling on a wide, deep river, relax and ride the current. It’s always worked for me, I assure you.

— Steven Erikson

Fear bespeaks of wisdom. Recognition of responsibility.

— Steven Erikson

Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering. Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers, and is not threatened by them. Show me a god that understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.

— Steven Erikson

When you’ve burned the bridges behind you, don’t go starting a fire on the one in front of you.

— Steven Erikson

Never, dear gods. Never mess with mortals.

— Steven Erikson

All they get around here is stories. Stories don’t make you bleed. Stories don’t make you go hungry, don’t give you sore feet. When you’re young smelling of pigshit and convinced there ain’t a weapon in all the damn world that’s going to hurt you, all stories do is make you want to be part of them.

— Steven Erikson

Name none of the fallen, for they stand in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.

— Steven Erikson

Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.

— Steven Erikson

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.

— Steven Erikson

I was needed, but I myself did not need. I had followers, but not allies, and only now do I understand the difference. And it is vast.

— Steven Erikson

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They’re allowed to think.

— Steven Erikson

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.

— Steven Erikson

Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.

— Steven Erikson

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