This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken.

I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.

The heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling

We didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it.

It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.

Steven Erikson is an extraordinary writer. I read Gardens of the Moon with great pleasure. And now that I have read it, I would be hard pressed to decide what I enjoyed more: the richly and ominously magical world of Malaz and Genabackis; the large cast of sympathetically-rendered characters; or the way the story accumulates to a climax that hits like machinegun fire. My advice to anyone who might listen to me is, Treat yourself to Gardens of the Moon. And my entirely selfish advice to Steven Erikson is, write faster.

We need metaphors of magic and monsters in order to understand the human condition.