Purest light will blind as surely as absolute darkness.

— Steven Erikson

Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first, and you'd better answer them!' [slurred Hellman.] 'With what?' [NASCAR] sneered. 'Explanations?' 'No. Answers. There's a difference-' 'Really? How? What difference?' 'Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Y'can always tell those,'cause those don't explain anything, and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know, and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them, and maybe you go out for a pitcher later, but who picks up the tab? That's what I want to know.' 'Right, and answers?' 'Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, 'cause I don't like what you're telling me, because those answers don't explain anything!

— 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 to the wake of the war between dark and light.

— Steven Erikson

She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fewer, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The flies dance a dance of avoidance - but for all that, they were eager to dance.

— Steven Erikson

Silence!” Kobold snapped. He eyed Dewier. “You are the historian who rode with Contains.” The historian faced him. “I am.”“You are a soldier.”“As you say.”“I do, and so you shall die with these soldiers, in a manner no different-““You mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed men and women, Kobold DOM?”“I mean to cripple Tagore before she even sets foot on this continent. I mean to make her too furious to think. I mean to crack that façade so she dreams of vengeance day and night, poisoning her every decision.”“You always fashioned yourself as the Empire’s harshest Fist, didn’t you, Kobold DOM? As if cruelty’s a virtue…

— Steven Erikson

...so you have found me and would know the tale. When a poet speaks of truth to another poet, what hope has truth? Let me ask this, then. Does one find memory in invention? Or will you find invention in memory? With bows in servitude before the other? Will the measure of greatness be weighed solely in details? Perhaps so, if details make up the full weft of the world, if themes are nothing more than the composite of lists perfectly ordered and unerring rendered; and if I should kneel before invention, as if it were memory made perfect.

— Steven Erikson

«Such is the irony of life,» Krupp proclaimed, raising one pastry-filled hand over his head, «that one learns to distrust the obvious, surrendering instead to insidious suspicion and confused conclusion. But, is Krupp deceived? Can an eel swim? Hurrah, these seeming muddy waters are home to Krupp, and his eyes are wide with wonder.»

— Steven Erikson

The closest I ever got to Dragon lance and Forgotten Realms was when I bought the box game set for the latter (I think this was before the novels came out). I will recall this—we were living in James Bay, in Victoria. We opened the box up and took out the maps while sitting in a Mexican restaurant. Ten minutes later I was as close as I have ever been to publicly burning someone else’s creation… What bothered us was the reworking of every fantasy cliché imaginable, all in one package now, and none of it made sense.

— Steven Erikson

The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.

— Steven Erikson

The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.'- Traveler

— Steven Erikson