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

Name none of the fallen, for they stand in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.

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

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.

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

The only consistent narrative we possess is one that we share with every other life-form: we are born, we live, and then we die.

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.