Darkness shields as much as it threatens.

Gods are but greater demons, the Cishaurim said, hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?

Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.

The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it.

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

There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.

To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife.