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

I am, perhaps, mad in certain respects, but I know what those respects are, and such self-deceptions are no part of them.

Now came the strangest happening I have to tell in all this already overlong tale; yet there was no sound or sight associated with it, no speaking beast or gigantic woman. It was only that as I heard him I felt a pressure against my breastbone, as I had felt it in Thrax when I knew I should be going north with the Claw. I remembered the girl in the

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.

the progress of science depends much less upon either theoretical considerations or systematic investigation than is commonly believed, but rather on the transmittal of reliable information, gained by chance or insight, from one set of men to their successors.

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.

“And you, I think, are a good man of the kind who does not know himself to be one—some say that is the only kind.

“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

rather a sort of philosophical horror at the thought of a cosmos in which rude pictures of beasts and monsters had been painted with flaming suns.