Steven Erikson
Pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist and novelist.
Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?
But now Apsalar was trying to tell him that competence was not justification. That necessity demanded its own path and there was no virtue to be found at its heart.
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.
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?
"What war is this?"
"A pointless one."
"They are all pointless Denier. Subjugation and defeat breed resentment and hatred, and such things cannot be bribed away."
"Unless the spirit of the defeated is crushed," Trull said.
‘I can see your reasons, my love. But won’t you get thirsty?’ — Inscription found beneath capstone of household well, Lakefront District, Darujhistan
'Now, it's just occurred to me that we're missing something crucial. Ah, yes, an artist! Bugg, have we a court artist? We need an artist! Find us an artist! Nobody move!'
Killers among your kind, among my kind, are just that - the savagery of beasts mated with intelligence, or what passes for intelligence. They dwell in a murky world, sir, confuse and fearful, stained dark with envy and malice. And in the end, they die as they lived. Frightened and alone, with every memory of power revealed as illusion, as farce.
An item that passes without provenance, pursued by many who thirst for its cold kiss, on which life and all that lay within life are 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.
"Oh," the figure settled back down, "those reasons. Well, yes. Clever, even. But still profoundly stupid."
An army that waits is soon an army at war with itself.
Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck of course.
The tiger is humbled by memories of prey.
If one could always choose the right question, then every answer could be as obvious.
The dead never interupt...They but arrive.
Memories belong in the soil, in stone, in wind. They are the land's unseen meaning, such that touches the soul of all who would look - truly look - upon it. Touches, in faintest whisper, old, almost shapeless echoes - to which a mortal life adds its own.
'If by our sacrifice - yours and mine,' said Onos T'oolan, 'the pain of one life can be ended; if, by our deaths, this one can be guided home ... we will judge this a worthy cause.'
'Just so,' agreed the King. 'So accept the escort, Adjunct, or I shall hold my breath until I achieve a most royal shade of purple.'
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.
"Keep a watch out, fools! There are things out there and you know what happens when things arrive!"