“We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheated, before blood wets the ground and screams fill the air, that the futility descends upon us all. Without our ar...”

“We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it mu...”

“Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you'd better answer them!' [slurred Hellian.] 'With what?' [Banaschar] sneered. 'Explanations?' 'No. Answers. There's a difference-' '...”

“Dour music has its own beauty, for the song of ruin is most fertile.”

“Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its serv...”

“Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.And this, she now realized, was th...”

“Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its na...”

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysf...”

“What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? Theyre allowed to think.”

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

“War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.”

“No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.”

“This time we'll be fighting for the nation. The company commander says that it's better to be the ghost of a fallen soldier than a nationless slave. For the sake of our fellow countrymen, our famil...”