Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'

There was nothing of that here, no ideality; and yet the house was more perfect for all its imperfection, showing that human beings might live and love in such a remote spot without the ability to shape their habitat into a poem.

I felt the fear that has always come upon me on the many occasions of my life when some small incident has made me aware of an incipient insanity.

“You are the advocate of the dead.” The old man nodded. “I am. People talk about being fair to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and then how much of w

“You extend hope at one moment and snatch it away at the next.” “Not I, but history.

“You’re a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn’t make materialism true.

There is a payment made by Nature to those who undergo hardships; it is that the lesser ones, at which people whose lives have been easier would complain, seem almost comfortable.

and even a seemingly purposeless miracle is an inexhaustible source of hope, because it proves to us that since we do not understand everything, our defeats—so much more numerous than our few and empty victories—may be equally specious.

We are as solid as most truly false things are—a dance of particles in space. Only the things no one can touch are true, as you should know by now.

so we have each of us in the dustiest cellars of our minds a counter at which we strive to repay the debts of the past with the debased currency of the present.