" The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable? "

― Steven Erikson , Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)