I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying.

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

I remeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.

The world is a big place and our brain is only three pounds.

Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.

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?

He had despised the sorcerer, thinking him one of those mewling souls who forever groaned beneath burdens of their own manufacture.