We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

A youthful American voice isn't particularly challenging - I've been a young American, and they're all around me. I can walk from my house to Barrington High School.

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?

All the history of the stage is a struggle, the gasping of a beautiful child born at the point of death. The moralists, censorship and oppression, technology, and now poverty have all tried to destroy her. Only we, the actors and audiences, have kept her alive.

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

There's a certain kind of lonely man who rejects love, because he believes that anyone who offers it wouldn't be a lover worth having.