Steven Erikson

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.

I've spoken often of how the fantasy genre is able to, with the greatest freedom among all the genres, take a metaphor and make it real. But of course that's only the starting point.

— Steven Erikson freedom

When two people are paying close attention to each other, check out the others in the group and see who's observing. Human dynamics are amazing, but so much that you might learn is subconscious interplay.

— Steven Erikson people

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 friendship

A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

— Steven Erikson fiction

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

— Steven Erikson writing

Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.

— Steven Erikson war

So much had changed inside him. He was no believer in causes, not any more. Certainty was an illusion, a lie. Fanaticism was poison in the soul, and the first victim in its inexorable, ever-growing list was compassion. Who could speak of freedom, when ones soul was bound in chains?

— Steven Erikson freedom

I look at you and I see a man because that’s what men are capable of—I don’t hunt for excuses because I don’t like to think that that’s how nasty we can get. We look at Sorry and we see reflections of ourselves. Hood take it, if we don’t like what we see.Chapter 4 p. 124

— Steven Erikson men

The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all.

— Steven Erikson truth

Wisdom did not belong to mortals, and those whom others called wise were only those who, through grim experience, had touched the very edges of unwelcome truths. For the wise, even joy was tinged with sorrow. No, the world made its demands upon mortals and they were immediate ones, pressingly, ferociously so, and even knowing a reasonable course was not enough to alter a mad plunge into disaster.

— Steven Erikson truth

Wealth, they said, is a false measure. Honour cannot be hoarded. Integrity cannot adorn a room. There is no courage in gold. Only fools build a fortress of wealth. Only fools would live in it and imagine themselves safe.

— Steven Erikson courage

Mappo Trell, I believe motivations prove, ultimately, irrelevant. Upon either side of the battlefield the face grins with blunt stupidity, even as smoke fills the sky from horizon to horizon, even as crops whither and die, even as sweet land turns to salt. Inequity ends, Trell, when no-one and no thing is left standing.

— Steven Erikson motivation

We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isnt something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, youll find theyre one and all tyrants or would-be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.

— Steven Erikson fear

— all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victimsfor what?SF Site Interview

— Steven Erikson dark

“An item,” he said softly, his eyes on the disc, “that passes without provenance, pursued by many who thirst for its cold kiss, on which life and all that lay within life is often gambled. Alone, a beggar’s crown. In great numbers, a king’s folly. Weighted with ruin, yet blood washes from it beneath the lightest rain, and to the next no hint of its cost. It is as it is, says Kruppe, worthless but for those who insist otherwise.”Chapter 7 pp. 233-234

— Steven Erikson life

A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilisation. Thus a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.

— Steven Erikson war

But were different from hawks and wolves, Ville. We can actually figure out the consequences of what we do, and that makes usoh, I dont know the word

— Steven Erikson different

History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. No more than that. As for the rest, kick through the bones and wreckage for they are what remain, what lasts until all turn to dust.

— Steven Erikson history

If by our sacrifice — yours and mine, said Onos Toolan, the pain of one life can be ended; if, by our deaths, this one can be guided homewe will judge this a worthy cause.

— Steven Erikson life

Kallor said: “I walked this land when the T’lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?” “Yes,” said Caladan Brood, “you never learn.”Chapter 10 p. 302

— Steven Erikson children

Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal’s hands. Such is the only end to immortality.Chapter 7 p. 208

— Steven Erikson god

Should you ever outrun the guilt within your past, Sorceress, you will have outrun your soul. When it finds you again it will kill you.Chapter 9 p. 292

— Steven Erikson soul

The world, Ahlrada Ahn knew, was indifferent to the necessity of preservation. Of histories, of stories layered with meaning and import. It cared nothing for what was forgotten, for memory and knowledge had never been able to halt the endless repetition of wilful stupidity that so bound peoples and civilizations.

— Steven Erikson knowledge

Through the gamut of life we struggled for control, for a means to fashion the world around us, an eternal, hopeless hunt for the privilege of being able to predict the shape of our lives.Chapter 16 p. 457

— Steven Erikson life

You leave me without hope, Brys said. I am sorry for that. Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. For you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge.

— Steven Erikson hope

“Since when is speaking the truth presumptuous?” “You are young, aren’t you?”Chapter 1 p. 25

— Steven Erikson truth

“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?” The Imass shrugged before replying. “I think of futility, Adjunct.” “Do all Imass think about futility?” “No. Few think at all.” “Why is that?” The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. “Because, Adjunct, it is futile.”Chapter 10 p. 325

— Steven Erikson thoughts

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