Steven Erikson Quotes

Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.

Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn't have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

A woman conceales what shee knowes not.

A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.

He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance.

Im my profession you have to mystify the enemy.

At first she beckoned and lured one into her world; then, she blurred the passageways, confused all the images, as if to elude detection.

The most dangerous of our calculations are those we call illusions.

The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

One time I completely thought I'd turned into a werewolf and was sure I could see hairs sprouting from my face. At those times I'd suddenly go very quiet and not talk to anyone, stunned from the developments, being a werewolf and all.

There's always another secret.' -Kelsier

Lure him out. Send in a 'customer' with a message from me needing to meet him. I'm not the kind of person he can ignore-well, that he used to not-never mind. Once he's out, we can get him to a place we choose." I nodded. "I can do that." "No," said Dimitri. "You can't." "Why not?" I asked, wondering if he thought it was too dangerous for me. "Because they'll know you're a dhampir the instant they see you. They'll probably smell it first. No Strigoi would have a dhampir working for him-only humans." There was an uncomfortable silence in the car. "No!" said Sydney. "I am not doing that!

Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.

The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.

Why didn't you guess this would happen?" Elayne demanded. He looked at her, expressionless. One side of his mouth twitched up, then he pulled his hat down, shading his eyepatch. "Light," Elayne said. "You knew. You spent this whole week planning with us, and you knew the entire time you'd throw it out with the dishwater.

Shhhhhh, shhhhhh, says the sea, but I don't believe her.

You still don't get it, do you, Margaret?' Kat smiled almost sadly. 'We never had to steal the Antony. All we had to do was get it next to the Cleopatra and switch the signs.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.

There is as much deception in noise as there is in silence

I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.

Tricks and treachery are merely proofs of lack of skill.

Illusions are hazardous, and so are disillusions.

The air was heavy with the smell of leather and dust, of old parchment and binding glue. It smelled of secrets.