Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.

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

History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.

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?

What if the choice isn’t between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?

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.

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.