Tom

“Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.”
― Steven Erikson

“Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.

Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you; for without critical judgment, the weapon you wield delivers- and let us not be coy here- naught but murder.

And its first victim is the moral probity of your cause.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“Aye.' It's a good word, I think. More a whole attitude than a word, really. With lots of meaning in it, too. A bit of 'yes' and a bit of 'well, fuck' and maybe some 'we're all in this mess together'. So, a word to sum up the Malazans.”
― Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams

“Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation.
None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve.
To face death is to stand alone.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds