Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.

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

Then I could not help wondering what the watching gods thought of us, with our clever masks and our jokes. What we think of crickets, perhaps, whose singing we hear with pleasure, though some of us smash them with our heels when they venture into sight.

Some writers say they cannot write in front of a window; many say they cannot function without almost perfect quiet. A writer with only two hours a day can write in the back of an open truck on the Interstate.

I was trapped in admiration for what I had once admired, as a fly in amber remains the captive of some long-vanished pine.

That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.