Steven Erikson Quotes

You must dismantle your sources, lest you do nothing but ape the prejudices of others

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

It is an extraordinary act of courage,’ said Tulas Shorn, ‘to come to know a stranger’s pain.

Such is the vastness of his genius that he can outwit even himself.

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

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.

And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.

Fear bespeaks of wisdom. Recognition of responsibility.

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

A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn’t know. Consider,’ he continued, Gotho’s Folly. Gotho’s curse was in being too aware – of everything. Every permutation, every potential. Enough to poison every scan he cast on the world. It availed him naught, and worse, he was aware of even that.

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