Steven Erikson
Steven Erikson
Steven Eriksonis the pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian novelist, who was educated and trained as both an archaeologist and anthropologist...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 October 1959
CountryCanada
war fall self
Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.
fashion soul soldier
Soldiers are issued armour for their flesh and bones, but they must fashion their own for their souls. Piece by piece. (Itkovian)
art self risk
All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.
agency fire evil
Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity - the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us. But if that is too dire , let's call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom.
memories love-you past
I love you still, but with your death I succumbed to a kind of infatuation. I convinced myself that what you and I had, so very briefly, was of far vaster and deeper import than it truly was. Of all the weapons we chose to turn upon ourselves, guilt is the sharpest, Silverfox. It can carve one's own past into unrecognizable shapes, false memories leading to beliefs that sow all kinds of obsessions.
differences followers allies
I was needed, but I myself did not need. I had followers, but not allies, and only now do I understand the difference. And it is vast.
compassion justice promise
Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things - once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.
narrative share born
The only consistent narrative we possess is one that we share with every other life-form: we are born, we live, and then we die.
believe writing fiction
Believe it or not, friendships are difficult to write in fiction. They can easily come across as forced, particularly if they involve too much explication and too many overt gestures of affection.
years stones layers
For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives.
expectations way demand
Any reasonable ruler would have the expectation and the demand the other way round.
paradise innocent empty
Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.
children artist imagine
No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine.
grief break-through effort
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.