No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death - every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.

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.

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

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

All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.

Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.