Nevi

“Almost to a man, the Men of Eärwa adhered without thought or knowledge to the customs of their people. A Conriyan didn’t shave because bare cheeks were effeminate. A Nansur didn’t wear leggings because they were crude. A Tydonni didn’t consort with dark-skinned peoples—or picks, as they called them—because they were polluted. For world-born men, such customs simply were. They gave precious food to statues of dead stone. They kissed the knees of weaker men. They lived in terror of their wanton hearts. They each thought themselves the absolute measure of all others. They felt shame, disgust, esteem, reverence … And they never asked why.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Warrior Prophet

“No one wanted to listen. Independent thought had been relinquished, with appalling eagerness, it seemed to him, and in its place had risen a stolid resolve to question nothing. Worse, Trull found he could not help himself. Even as he saw the anger grow in the faces of those around him—anger that he dare challenge, that he dare think in ways contrary to theirs, and so threaten their certainty—he was unable to stay silent.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides

“The world was one thing, but all people are not of it. Some are better than it, apart from it, more splendid, untouchable and pure.”
― Anne Rice, The Feast of All Saints

“Seren Pedac's attention remained on the approaching Tiste Edur. A hunter. A killer. One who probably also possessed the trait of long silences. She could imagine this Binadas, sharing a fire in the wilderness with Hull Beddict. In the course of an evening, a night and the following morning, perhaps a half-dozen words exchanged between them. And, she suspected, the forging of a vast, depthless friendship. These were the mysteries of men, so baffling to women. Where silences could become a conjoining of paths. Where a handful of inconsequential words could bind spirits in an ineffable understanding. Forces at play that she could sense, indeed witness, yet ever remaining outside them. Baffled and frustrated and half disbelieving.”
― Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides