The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.

If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.

The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.

Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.

Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. “Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?

To be a student required a peculiar kind of capitulation, a willingness not simply to do as one is told, but to surrendor the movements of one's soul to the unknown complexities of another's. A willingness, not simply to be moved, but to be remade.

Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.