Ian C. Esslemont Quotes

The perfume of power. The musk of money? He frowned. Well, no, maybe not that one.

You've all heard stories about how these Seguleh have never been beaten. How they've slaughtered everyone who's ever faced them. Well look around... We're still here! And now - now they're offering you a choice! All you've to do is drop your weapons and surrender. That's all. But if you do that I can promise you one thing ... you ain't gonna have another shot at the bastards! So what's going to be? Hey? What's your answer?
Silence. Aragan glared right and left, his heart hammering, gulping breaths. Then at the far end of the line a hulking Dal Honese trooper drew his blade, held it out saluting, and bashed it to his shield twice. Hands went to sword-grips all up and down the lines. Swords hissed, drawing to clash in a great thunderous roar agains shields, once, twice, then extending in the formal salute.
There's your Malazan answer

I've come to understand that the truth isn't really what's important ... what really matters is what people agree is the truth. -Greymane

Burdens willingly taken on, he decided, come to define the bearer. 'So

Jakatakan. Ancient isle. The mythical island beyond the Riders.' She addressed the others. 'But not so mythical, yes?'
'Until they came,' breathed Sister Esa.
'And what name did they come bearing?' Sister Gosh demanded.
'The name of the Island of the House of Death,' said Totsin.
'Malaz,' said Carfin, facing outward to the night.
'They are coming,' affirmed Sister Gosh.

[...]They offended Hood,' he stated flatly.
'And How they did that?' Silk enquired.
'They demanded a tithe upon the temple. I demonstrated Hood's tithe.'
'And who are you to judge?' Smokey demanded. The lad's Dark, almost blue-black eyes edged aside to Smokey. 'I am Hood's Sword.

It takes an unusually philosophic mind to accept that all one's suffering might be to no end, really, in the larger scheme of things.

If you corner him there will be bloodshed. And I do not like bloodshed.'
Dorin arched a brow. 'Really. You don't like bloodshed.'
'No. It's messy and unsophisticated. There are better ways of doing things.'
'Such as?'
Wu brightened, flashed his yellowed crooked teeth. 'My ways. Lying, trickery, deceit, cheating, or just plain patience. He will come to us.

Give and give of y'self till there's nothing left! Only then can you have something! If you take, you diminish things till there's nothing left. If you give, you provide and things grow! Yes?

Scillara was not cruel; she was simply not interested and he did not hold this against her. It seemed to him that frankly most people by temperament and character should not be thrust into the role of parents. She was simply uncharacteristic in admitting it. He

There is much running of vomit and faeces on board this ship. Please stop adding to it.

Battle is for an army to win or lose; war is for civilization to win or lose.

Memories are not the truth of the past. We sculpt them to suit our images of our present selves. And, in any case, the truth of then is not the truth of now.

I believe true evil lies in actions. In deliberate harmful acts.' 'Spoken

Kruppe wonders now, in the presentsight, as it were – or is it is? – what pedestrian activities or seemingly innocuous events will, in the hindsight of the future, be seen to be foreshadowings of the grievous event which may, or may not, come to pass, and which, by the forewarning, may thusly be headed off.

The problem with paths is that once you have chosen one, You cannot choose the others. Attributed to Gothos

Freedom - rather more complicated in the concrete than the abstract, yes?

You man that tiller day and night. Won't you rest?'
Ereko lightly laughed the suggestion aside. 'No, lad. I am so old now that sleeping and waking have melded together into one and I know not which I inhabit.'
Watching the lad struggle through that, Ereko shifted course slightly to avoid a looming ice-spire.
'Truly? So old? As old as the mountains?'
Ereko raised his brows. 'Goodness, no. Not that old. Only half so old, I should think.

Perhaps it is the case that no organization or hierarchy can withstand the closest of scrutiny. Not even a smugly self-touted meritocracy. The success and persistence of utter fools everywhere is sad testament to that.

We are here to swear a vow! As many of you have already noticed, this is no random field. It is an ancient site. A place of power. Holy to our family, to our ancestors, and, some say, even to those ancient ones who preceded us upon these lands.
'We gather here on this day in the sight of one another to swear a binding oath. What we here swear is unrelenting and unending opposition to the Malazan Empire for so long as it shall endure. To never abandon or turn away from such opposition. To this cause all gathered here must give their individual agreement and binding commitment. Those of you who know doubt, or who feel unable to pledge yourselves utterly to this cause, are free to go. Nay, are encouraged to go. And all without rancour or ill-feelings.'
'So … this is my Vow. This is what I here pledge and what I, in turn, ask of anyone who would choose to follow me. Now … what say you,... ?

Speak not to me of the meddling Jaghut!

So he was finished with Dorin. He was not the lad he'd been when he'd entered the city. Not that he'd been some green farmhand, but he'd been untested, unbloodied . . . unready.
Not so now. Dorin was done.
Hard lessons luckily survived had put an end to that lad and his dreams. A transition from which a good few do not emerge alive. But necessary, if hard. The city had cut away the untried Dorin and trampled his dreams into the mud and the mire.
He was Dancer now, and Dancer from now on.

Women are terrifying to men,' he whispered, 'because they can break them with the simplest word or briefest glance.'

Now she smiled. 'Not if they care for them.

Only the dead should be certain of anything.

Who are you,' it boomed, 'to light a fire here in the depths of Himatan?'

[...]

'Someone who would dare to do so,' Pon-lor shouted down. 'Think you on that.

When you do not recognize the wrongs of the past, the future takes its revenge. -Author forgotten