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 latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.' - Traveller

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

Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck of course.

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 shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.

The notion of evil for its own sake strikes me as boring -- all these Dark Lords intent on creating wastelands packed with enslaved victims... for what?

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

The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.