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"There were clouds closed fast round the moon. And one by one, gardens died."

‘Truths, yes. One after another, one boulder settling down, then another. And another. Blotting out the light, darkness closing in, grit and sand sifting down, a solid silence when the last one is in place. Now, dear fool, try drawing a breath. A single breath.’

‘You find out who I am and it all falls apart.’ He grimaced, then spat down into the sea. ‘Very well. Nothing ever lasts, not even ignorance. My name’s Squint.’
‘I hate to puncture your ego – as tortured as it is – but no vast revelation follows your name.’
... Poor man. He did the right thing taking Coltaine’s life, but he’s the only one who can’t live with that.’

‘When I was a child,’ Apsalar said, ‘I believed that there were cities there, but no wars. Just beautiful gardens, and the flowers were ever in bloom, every season, day and night, filing the air with wondrous scents ... you know, I told all of that to someone, once. He later said to me that he fell in love with me that night.’

‘Look at that,’ he said. ..that moon’s nothing but a blur. Not the haze of cloud, neither. It’s a distant world, ain’t it? Another realm, with other armies crawling around in the fog, killing each other, draggin’ children into the streets, red swords flashing down over’n over. And I bet they look up every now and then, wonderin’ at all the dust they kicked up, makin’ it hard to see that other world overhead.’

‘ Sergeant Cord was still cursing at Crump, who had stupidly waved at one of the passing enemy ships, just after the battle that wasn’t. Crump .... was now listening to his sergeant with a broad, mindless smile, his expression twitching to sheer delight every time Cord’s tirade reached new heights of imagination.’

‘Ships were passing within a quarrel’s flight of each other, faces turned and staring across the gap, something like relief connecting that regard – Taralack had even seen a Malazan soldier wave. Before a fellow soldier had batted the man in the side of the head with a fist.’

‘The Adjunct’s voice: ‘High Mage, you and I must talk.’
‘It wasn’t—’ ‘Ben Adaephon Delat, you and I will talk. Now.’
Straightening, Kalam backed away, then halted at a gesture from Tavore.
‘Oh no, assassin. You as well.’

‘That was a Hood-damned illusion. Thank the gods cowering in their outhouses right now that the idiots swallowed the hook – but listen, it wasn’t just that. I had help. And then I had help!’ ‘What does that mean?’

He did it again... :)
‘Kalam knelt beside Quick Ben, studied the man’s face for a moment, the slack expression, the closed eyes. Then he slapped the wizard. Hard.
Quick Ben swore, then glared up at the assassin. ‘I should crush you like a bug, Kalam.’
‘Right now, I think,’ he rumbled in reply, ‘a bug’s fart might blow you right off this ship, Quick.’

‘they saw, upon Tavore’s expression, a growing ... dismay. And fear. And at first, neither emotion made any sense.
Unless ...
Unless she was unable to return such loyalty.
And so the doubt twisted free, like newborn vipers slithering from their clutch of eggs, and tiny, deadly fangs sank into every figure standing there, witness to what her face revealed.’

‘Adjunct,’ Fist Keneb said, ‘it was your confirmation that was needed. To make it real. I do not wish to offend you, but before then, you were the Adjunct.
You were Laseen’s. Her property.’
Her expression was suddenly flat, dangerous. ‘And now, Fist?’
But it was Kalam who answered. ‘Now, you belong to the Fourteenth.’
‘You belong to us,’ Keneb said.’

“The Fourth and Ninth, Adjunct.’
Her gaze narrowed on the man, then she turned to Keneb. ‘Fist? They’re your resurrected squads.’
‘The Fourth – that would be Strings’s—’
‘For Hood’s sake,’ the Adjunct said. ‘His name is Fiddler. It is the worst-kept secret in this army, Keneb.”

‘A smile amidst the red, bristling beard. ‘Ain’t no Adjutant any more, Admiral.’
Thin brows rose, and Nok said, ‘Title alone gifts the bearer with intelligence?’
Stormy nodded. ‘That it does, sir. Which is why Gesler’s a sergeant and I’m a corporal. We get stupider every year that passes.’
‘And Stormy’s proud of that,’ Gesler said, slapping his companion on the back.’

“This rain,’ Malick Rel continued behind him, ‘it shall make the seas rise, yes?”

‘Tell you what, I’ll grab him by his cute braid and dangle him from the tower. You can signal from below. I swing him back and forth and it means he says “Sure, come on up, old friend”. And if I just drop ‘im it means the other thing. That, or my hands got tired and maybe slipped.’
That image of Braven Tooth dangling Tayschrenn by the braid :)

‘Taxilian, these Edur slaves below. Where did they find them?’
‘I don’t know.’ The bruised face twisted into a bitter smile. ‘They liberated them. The sweet lie of that word, Samar Dev.’

As if ... the capability to do something was justification enough for doing it. The mindset of the street-corner bully, in his head two or three rules by which he guided his own existence, and by which he sought to shape his world. The ones he must fear, the ones he could drive to their knees, and maybe ones he hungered to be like, or ones he lusted after, but even there the relationship was one of power.

“a world in which children were subjected to such things was a world in which compassion was a hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold contempt.”

‘They all cast shadows, Uncle,’ Panek said. ‘Into your realm. Every one of them. That’s why there’s so many ... prisoners.’
Cotillion frowned, then, slowly, inexorably as comprehension dawned, the god’s eyes widened.’

‘Why do you miss Edgewalker, then?’
‘For his stories.’
‘Oh, those.’
‘The dragons. The foolish ones, the wise ones, the living ones and the dead ones. If every world were but a place on the board, they would be the game pieces. Yet no single hand directs them. Each is wild, a will unto itself. And then there are the shadows –’

‘And so,’ Trull Sengar said, with a hint of a smile, ‘you have taken our measure, Cotillion. And from this visit, we in turn receive equally bitter gifts. Namely, the suggestion that all we do here, in defence of this First Throne, is without meaning. So, do you now elect to withdraw us from this place?’ His eyes narrowed on the god, and the ironic half-smile gave way to ... something else. ‘I thought not.’

‘You,’ said Monok Ochem to the god, ‘are dangerous. You think what must not be thought, you speak aloud what must not be said. You are as a hunter who walks a path no-one else can see.’

‘It is the nature of my people,’ Onrack said – and Cotillion could detect a certain tone in the words, something like vicious irony – ‘to believe in their own supreme efficacy. They mean to win that game, Cotillion of Shadow, or greet oblivion. They accept no alternatives. Pride? It is not pride. It is the very reason to exist.’

‘I have never seen such skill with the spear. Trull Sengar kills, and kills, and then, when it is done and he kneels in the blood of the kin he has slain, he weeps.’

‘Willful fools with murder in their rotted hearts believed otherwise. They divided the dead into innocent victim and the rightfully punished, and knew with unassailable conviction upon which side they themselves stood. With such conviction, the plunging of knives proved so very easy.’

‘A conceit among the living, that their words could ease the dead. Worse, to voice words seeking forgiveness from those dead. The fallen had but one message to deliver to the living, and it had nothing to do with forgiveness.’

‘And the blood, which they had shed so profusely, had yielded no evidence of its taint, for neither the name of a people nor the hue of their skin, nor indeed the cast of their features, could make life’s blood any less pure, or precious.’