Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8) QUOTES

81 " It was a quirk of blind optimism that held that someone broken could, in time, heal, could reassemble all the pieces and emerge whole, perhaps even stronger for the ordeal. Certainly wiser, for what else could be the reward for suffering? The notion that did not sit well, with anyone, was that one so broken might remain that way – neither dying (and so removing the egregious example of failure from all mortal eyes) nor improving. A ruined soul should not be stubborn, should not cling to what was clearly a miserable existence. Friends recoil. Acquaintances drift away. And the one who fell finds a solitary world, a place where no refuge could be found from loneliness when loneliness was the true reward of surviving for ever maimed, for ever weakened. Yet who would not choose that fate, when the alternative was pity? "

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

82 " We’d thought the same, once. We’d deceived ourselves into thinking we were the masters, that every force bowed to our command. And what happened? They destroyed everything!’
‘I don’t-’
‘Understand! I see that! They are conjurations — manifestations — they exist to warn you. They are the proof that all that you think to enslave will turn on you.’ And it backed away. ‘The end begins again, it begins again.’
Cotillion stepped forward. ‘Light, Dark and Shadow — these three — are you saying-’
‘Three?’ Tulas Shorn laughed with savage bitterness. ‘What then of Life? Fire and Stone and Wind? What, you fools, of the Hounds of Death? Manifestations, I said. They will turn — they are telling you that! That is why they exist! The fangs, the fury — all that is implacable in nature — each aspect but a variation, a hue in the maelstrom of destruction! "

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

83 " When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease. "

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

84 " Will you come and tell me when the music ends When the musicians are swallowed in flames Every instrument blackening and crumbling to ash When the dancers stumble and sprawl their diseased limbs rotting off and twitching the skin sloughing away Will you come and tell me when the music ends When the stars we pushed into the sky loose their roars And the clouds we built into visible rage do now explode When the bright princes of privilege march past with dead smiles falling from their faces a host of deceiving masks Will you come and tell me when the music ends When reason sinks into the morass of superstition Waging a war of ten thousand armies stung to the lash When we stop looking up even as we begin our mad running into stupidity’s nothingness with heavenly choirs screaming Will you come and tell me when the music ends When the musicians are no more than black grinning sticks Every instrument wailing its frantic death cry down the road When the ones left standing have had their mouths cut off leaving holes from which a charnel wind eternally blows "

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

85 " Baruk looked up, then twisted in his chair to regard his guest, who was busy preening herself on his map-table. ‘Crone, the inconsistencies in this text are infuriating.’
The Great Raven cocked her head, beak gaping for a moment in laughter, then said, ‘So what? Show me a written history that makes sense, and I will show you true fiction. If that is all you want, then look elsewhere! My master concluded that Dillat’s nonsense would make a fine gift for your collection. If you are truly displeased, there are plenty of other idiocies in his library, those that he bothered to extract from Moon’s Spawn, that is. He left whole rooms crammed with the rubbish, you know.’
Baruk blinked slowly, struggling to keep his horror from his voice as he said, ‘No, I did not know that.’
Undeceived, Crone cackled. Then she said, ‘My master was most amused at the notion of falling to his knees and crying out to the Hundred Gods-’
‘Thousand. The Thousand Gods.’
‘Whatever. "

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

86 " It may be that in the belief of the possibility of redemption, people willingly do wrong. Redemption waits, like a side door, there in whatever court of judgement we eventually find ourselves. Not even the payment of a fine is demanded, simply the empty negotiation that absolves responsibility. "

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

87 " I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea.’ Nimander "

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

88 " If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. 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.’ Endest "

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

89 " It seems," the undead Tiste Edur said, "my Hounds have found new . . . pets."
"Saw his head off, Cotillion," Shadowthrone said. "I hate him already. "

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

90 " Kill, thought Ditch, nodding, kill, yes, I understand. I do. Kill, for her. Kill. And he found that the word itself, yes, the word itself, knew how to smile. "

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

91 " People will grieve. For the dead, for the living For the loss of innocence and for the surrender of innocence, which are two entirely different things. We will grieve, for choices made and not made, for the mistakes of the heart which can never be undone, for the severed nerve-endings of old scars and those to come. "

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

92 " How the time for dreams of the future seemed to slip past unnoticed, until in reviving them a man realized, with a shock, that the privilege was no longer his to entertain, that it belonged to those younger faces he saw on all sides, laughing in the tavern and on the streets, running wild. "

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

93 " Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one’s wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands. "

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

94 " The sky cares nothing for you, dear one. The stars don't even see you. "

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

95 " purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine. This scattering of sticks in the dust, that any adult might kick through without a moment’s thought, is in truth the bones of a vast world, clothed, fleshed, a fortress, a forest, a great wall against which terrible hordes surge and are thrown back by a handful of grim heroes. A nest for dragons, and these shiny smooth pebbles are their eggs, each one home to a furious, glorious future. No creation was ever raised as fulfilled, as brimming, as joyously triumphant, and all the machinations and manipulations of adults are the ghostly recollections of childhood and its wonders, the awkward mating to cogent function, reasonable purpose; and each façade has a tale to recount, a legend to behold in stylized propriety. Statues in alcoves fix sombre expressions, indifferent to every passer-by. Regimentation rules these creaking, stiff minds so settled in habit and fear. To "

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

96 " You spoke of a wolf god,' Skintick said. 'You began to tell us a story.'
'So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.'
'Ridiculous,' Kallor grunted. 'See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf - and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed. "

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

97 " Sacrifice must be weighed by the pain of what is surrendered, and this alone was the true measure of a virtue’s worth. "

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

98 " Iskaral Pust’s warbling battle cry was somewhat strangled as he leaned forward, perched high in the stirrups, hands reaching like a raptor’s talons, and the mule reluctantly stumped forward.
Kruppe watched this agonizingly slow charge. He sighed. ‘Really now. It comes to this? So be it.’ And he kicked his war-mule into motion.
The beasts closed, step by step. By step. "

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

99 " History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. "

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

100 " Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation. None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve. To face death is to stand alone. "

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