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.

There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated.

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?

This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.

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

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?

Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.