My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

We think that we know a man or a woman, when so much of what we know is actually that man's or that woman's situation, his or her place on the board of life. Move the pawn to the last row and see her rise in armor, sword in hand.

Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. We believe we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

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

...in some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.

When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.