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

It may be that the only reason childhood memories act on us so strongly is that, being the most remote we possess, they are the worst remembered and so offer the least resistance to that process by which we mold them nearer and nearer to an ideal which is fundamentally artistic, or at least nonfactual.

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.

Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.

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

You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree.

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.