The heart of wisdom is tolerance.

The art of illusion is grace itself.

The only death I fear is dying ignorant.

The tiger is humbled by memories of prey.

Never, dear gods. Never mess with mortals.

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

Shake your fist all you want but dead is dead

The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.

First in , Last out. Motto of the bridgeburners

Fear bespeaks of wisdom. Recognition of responsibility.

You’re loitering, citizen.” “Actually, I was hesitating.

I have to feel what I'm writing, right down to the core.

Detachment is a flaw, not a virtue-don’t you realize that?

Your brain works with all the subtlety of a malicious child.

Such is the vastness of his genius that he can outwit even himself.

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

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

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

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

No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine.

Ah, Fist, it’s the curse of history that those who should read them, never do.

I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.

Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.

He was not a modest man. Contemplating suicide, he summoned a dragon.' Gothos' Folly

You must dismantle your sources, lest you do nothing but ape the prejudices of others

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

It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain.

When you've burned the bridges behind you, don't go starting a fire on the one in front of you.

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

What matter the colour of the collar around a man's neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?

And over it all, the butterflies swarmed, like a million yellow-pettalled flowers dancing on swirling winds.

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

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

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

It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.

Soldiers are issued armour for their flesh and bones, but they must fashion their own for their souls. Piece by piece.

Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.

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 stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.

There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived.

All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.

I was needed, but I myself did not need. I had followers, but not allies, and only now do I understand the difference. And it is vast.

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.

A celebration of insignificance, Is that all we are in the end? And one day I’ll just be one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder

A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

I mean the only thing us dead soldiers got in common is that none of us was good enough or lucky enough to survive the fight. We're a host of failures.

Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love all manner of sacrifice could be borne.

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?

Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.

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