Midnight Tides Quotes

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“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. From 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. ‘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, Midnight Tides

“Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“money’s just an idea, it has power. Only it’s not real power. Just the promise of power. But that promise is enough so long as everyone keeps pretending it’s real. Stop pretending and it all falls apart.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“As if the only genuine gestures were the small ones, the ones devoid of an audience. As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Witness.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Everything worth fighting for is gained without fighting.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Fallen. Who tracks our footsteps, I wonder? We who are the forgotten, the discounted and the ignored. When the path is failure, it is never willingly taken. The fallen. Why does my heart weep for them? Not them but us, for most assuredly I am counted among them. Slaves, serfs, nameless peasants and labourers, the blurred faces in the crowd—just a smear on memory, a scuffing of feet down the side passages of history.

Can one stop, can one turn and force one’s eyes to pierce the gloom? And see the fallen? Can one ever see the fallen? And if so, what emotion is born in that moment?

There were tears on his cheeks, dripping down onto his chafed hands. He knew the answer to that question, knife-sharp and driven deep, and the answer was…recognition.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Fear bespeaks of wisdom. Recognition of responsibility.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“To achieve peace, destruction is delivered. To give the gift of freedom, one promises eternal imprisonment. Adjudication obviates the need for justice. This is a studied, deliberate embrace of diametric opposition. It is a belief in balance, a belief asserted with the conviction of religion. But in this case, the proof of a god’s power lies not in the cause but in the effect. Accordingly, in this world and in all others, proof is achieved by action, and therefore all action— including the act of choosing inaction— is inherently moral. No deed stands outside the moral context. At the same time, the most morally perfect act is the one taken in opposition to what has occurred before.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“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, Midnight Tides

“When one does not know what one seeks, caution is the surest armour.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“As they walked, Tehol spoke. ‘…the assumption is the foundation stone of Letherii society, perhaps all societies the world over. The notion of inequity, my friends. For from inequity derives the concept of value, whether measured by money or the countless other means of gauging human worth. Simply put, there resides in all of us the unchallenged belief that the poor and the starving are in some way deserving of their fate. In other words, there will always be poor people. A truism to grant structure to the continual task of comparison, the establishment through observation of not our mutual similarities, but our essential differences. ‘I know what you’re thinking, to which I have no choice but to challenge you both. Like this. Imagine walking down this street, doling out coins by the thousands. Until everyone here is in possession of vast wealth. A solution? No, you say, because among these suddenly rich folk there will be perhaps a majority who will prove wasteful, profligate and foolish, and before long they will be poor once again. Besides, if wealth were distributed in such a fashion, the coins themselves would lose all value—they would cease being useful. And without such utility, the entire social structure we love so dearly would collapse. ‘Ah, but to that I say, so what? There are other ways of measuring self-worth. To which you both heatedly reply: with no value applicable to labour, all sense of worth vanishes! And in answer to that I simply smile and shake my head. Labour and its product become the negotiable commodities. But wait, you object, then value sneaks in after all! Because a man who makes bricks cannot be equated with, say, a man who paints portraits. Material is inherently value-laden, on the basis of our need to assert comparison—but ah, was I not challenging the very assumption that one must proceed with such intricate structures of value? ‘And so you ask, what’s your point, Tehol? To which I reply with a shrug. Did I say my discourse was a valuable means of using this time? I did not. No, you assumed it was. Thus proving my point!’ ‘I’m sorry, master,’ Bugg said, ‘but what was that point again?’ ‘I forget. But we’ve arrived. Behold, gentlemen, the poor.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“You are frowning. Why?’ ‘Well, I’ve already killed a god today,’ Iron Bars said. ‘If I’d known this was going to be a day for killing gods, I might have paced myself better.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“But let me describe the characteristics of peace, my young friend. A pervasive dulling of the senses, a decadence afflicting the culture, evinced by a growing obsession with low entertainment. The virtues of extremity – honour, loyalty, sacrifice – are lifted high as shoddy icons, currency for the cheapest of labours. The longer peace lasts, the more those words are used, and the weaker they become. Sentimentality pervades daily life. All becomes a mockery of itself, and the spirit grows… restless.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“I am a caster of nets. Tyrants and emperors rise and fall. Civilizations burgeon then die, but there are always casters of nets. And tillers of the soil, and herders in the pastures. We are where civilization begins, and when it ends, we are there to begin it again.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present. With its seemingly endless excesses, its ravenous appetites. Ever the same rules, ever the same game.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff's edge.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Tehol collected his cup and carefully sniffed. Then he frowned at his manservant.
Who shrugged. “We don’t have no herbs, master. I had to improvise.”
“With what? Sheep hide?”
Bugg’s brows rose. “Very close indeed. I had some leftover wool.”
“The yellow or the grey?”
“The grey.”
“Well, that’s alright, then.” He sipped. “Smooth.”
“Yes, it would be.”
“We’re not poisoning ourselves, are we?” – MT 237”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Is that you?" came Shurq’s voice from the darkness within.
"Why yes," Bugg said, "it is."
"Liar. You’re not you, you’re Bugg. Where’s Tehol? I need to talk to Tehol.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Language changes over time. Meaning twists. Mistakes compound with each transcribing. Even those stalwart sentinels of perfection—numbers—can, in a single careless moment, be profoundly altered.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Oh, who has grasped hold of my soul this night? He found himself unhitching the sword, heard himself saying," I don’t know if you have a weapon, Acquitor, "and knew his own disbelief at the absurdity of his own words, the shallowness of his reasoning," so I will give you mine... "And he was holding the sheathed sword out to her.
At the threshold of her home.
Fear turned, studied him, but Trull could not look away from her, not even to see what must be realization dawning in his face.
Letherii though she was, Seren Pedac clearly understood, her gaze becoming confused, then clearing. "Just that, I take it. A weapon... for me to use."
No. "Yes... Acquitor. A weapon..."
She accepted it, but the gesture was without meaning now.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“There are tides beneath every tide
And the surface of water
Holds no weight.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“The question of what is deserved should rarely, if ever, be asked. Asking it leads to deadly judgement, and acts of unmitigated evil. Atrocity revisited in the name of justice breeds its own atrocity.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“You take your natural vices and call them virtues. Of which greed is the most despicable. That and betrayal of commonality. After all, whoever decided that competition is always and without exception a healthy attribute? Why that particular path to self-esteem? Your heel on the hand of the one below. This is worth something? Let me tell you, it’s worth nothing. Nothing lasting. Every monument that exists beyond the moment—no matter which king, emperor or warrior lays claim to it—is actually a testament to the common, to co-operation, to the plural rather than the singular.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Death is every mortal’s shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“Time was such an element, she now believed. The stretch of existence between events, consisting of countless other events, all strung together in complex patterns of cause and effect, all laid out like images sewn onto a tapestry, creating a sequence of scenes that, once one stood back, was revealed to be co-existing. Present all at once.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides