The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.

For Hood’s sake,’ the foreigner muttered. ‘What’s wrong with words?’ ‘With words,’ said Redmask, turning away, ‘meanings change.’ ‘Well,’ Anaster Toc said, following as Redmask made his way back to his army’s camp,.. ‘that is...

Karsa’s expression soured. ‘When I began this journey, I was young. I believed in one thing. Ibelieved in glory. I know now, Siballe, that glory is nothing. Nothing. This is what I now understand.”What else...

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.

The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and...

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.

A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn’t know. Consider,’ he continued, Gotho’s Folly. Gotho’s curse was in being too aware – of everything. Every permutation, every potential. Enough to...

I have seen the face of sorrowShe looks away in the distanceAcross all these bridgesFrom whence I cameAnd those spans, trussed and archedHold up our lives as we go back againTo how we thought thenTo...

No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine. […]To drive children into labour is to slaughter artists, to scour deathly all wonder, the flickering dart of imagination eager as...

So you say, with your shiny hair and pouty lips – and those breasts – just wait till you start dropping whelps, they’ll be at your ankles one day, big as they are – not...

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...

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They’re allowed to think.

If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in. We are desperate with our dreams. What – oh, what – does that say?

…so you have found me and would know the tale. When a poet speaks of truth to another poet, waht hope has truth? Let me ask this, then. DOes one find memory in invention? Or...

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

But Hood was not yet done with her. He swung her up again, spun and once more hammered her onto the stone. ‘I have had,’ the Jaghut roared, and into the air she went again,...

What is there left to understand? Choice is an illusion. Freedom is conceit. The hands that reach out to guide your every step, your every thought, come not from the gods, for they are no...

Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one’s wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women.He thougt for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that’d be. It’s the job of a man to fan the spark...

It’s our nature, isn’t it? Again and again, we cling to the foolish belief taht simple solutions exist

No matter, they weren’t going anywhere. Never again. Two skeletons buried beneath a dead city. No more fitting a barrow for a warrior of the Apocalypse and a Malazan soldier. That seemed just, poetic even....

There’s little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It...

He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, ‘Sir, if there’s something we can’t handle how do we handle it anyway?’ She either grunted or laughed from...

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.

For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives.

None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret...

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

Now get going. You’ll find a way of calm through.””And you, Mael?””I’ll drop in later. I’ve things for you to do, Withal. But for now,” he faced inland, “I’m going to beat a god senseless.

Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you’d better answer them!’ [slurred Hellian.] ‘With what?’ [Banaschar] sneered. ‘Explanations?’ ‘No. Answers. There’s a difference-‘ ‘Really? How? What difference?’ ‘Explanations are what people...

All right, shadow-priest, you’ve been spying — on what? What state secrets have you learned watching me groom these horses?”Only that they hate you, Daru. Every time your back was turned, they got ready to...

Powiedz mi, Tool, o czym myślisz najczęściej? Imass wzruszył ramionami. – O bezcelowości, przyboczna. – Czy wszyscy Imassowie o niej myślą? – Nie. Większość w ogóle nie myśli. – A to dlaczego? Przechylił głowę. –...

Very well, I shall try again. Good living and health, as you say, yielding well-being. But well-being is a contextual notion, a relative notion. Perceived benefits are measured by way of contrast. In any case,...

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...

People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche – effete and sensitive were the brands of finer breeding. It was easy for them, safe, and that was the whole...

Laws decide wich forms of oppression are allowed, Lord. And because of that, those laws are servants to those in power, for whom oppression is given as a right over those who have little or...

He had been born into debt, as had his father and his father before him. Indenture and slavery were two words for the same thing.

Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.’‘Temper, you mean.’‘No, temperature. It’s getting chilly.

Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal’s shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that...

«Such is the irony of life,» Kruppe 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 Kruppe deceived? Can...

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things – once the cloak of deceits is...

Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.

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 Fener, but the paths the sprites...

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 in the wake of the war between...

You always fashioned yourself as the Empire’s harshest Fist, didn’t you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty’s a virtue…

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...

Everyone died in solitude, after all. A simple enough truth. A truth no one need fear. The spirits waited before they cast judgement upon a soul, waited for that soul—in its dying isolation—to set judgement...

Captain! You can’t hold them off! I tried! I swear! They’ve been artificially enhanced, sir! But all the humans died out – there’s bones out there by the millions! They were all suffocated by cuteness!...

With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy—something a lot of people didn’t notice and maybe still don’t. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the...

There are times, Kruppe murmurs, when celibacy born of sad deprivation becomes a boon, nay, a source of great relief.