141
" Philosophers and fools might claim that light is without shape, that it finds its existence in painting the shape of other things, as wayward as the opening of an eye. That, in the absence of such things, it slants unseen, indeed, invisible. Without other things to strike upon, it does not cavort, does not bounce, does not paint and reflect. Rather, it flows eternal. If this is so, then light is unique in the universe.
But the universe holds to one law above all others: nothing is unique.
Fools and philosophers have not, alas, seen the light. "
― Steven Erikson , Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)
153
" There is, as a legion of morose poets well know, nothing inconsequential about love. Nor all those peculiarities of related appetites often confused for love, for example lust, possession, amorous worship, appalling notions of abject surrender where one’s own will is bled out in sacrifice, obsessions of the fetishistic sort that might include earlobes or toenails or regurgitated foodstuffs, and indeed that adolescent competitiveness which in adults—adults who should of course know better but don’t—is manifested as insane jealousy. "
― Steven Erikson , Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)
154
" He would tell his people all this. He would make them not his followers, but his companions. And together they would bring civilization to ruin, whenever and wherever they found it. Because, for all the good it created, its sole purpose was to breed followers – enough to heave into motion forces of destruction, spreading a tide of blood at the whim of those few cynical tyrants born to lead. Lead, yes, with lies, with iron words – duty, honour, patriotism, freedom – that fed the wilfully stupid with grand purpose, with reason for misery and delivering misery in kind. "
― Steven Erikson , Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)