All of us... when we think we are talking most intimately to someone else, are actually addressing an image we have of the person to whom we believe we speak.

You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter.

You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.

What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.

That was when I found out that the best way in the world to make yourself feel better when you have hit bottom is to try to get somebody else to feel better. There are certain things in life that are truly worth knowing, and that is one of the big ones.

Men are said to desire women, Severian. Why do they despise the women they obtain?

Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.