The Urth of the New Sun: The sequel to 'The Book of the New Sun'

and I thought then (as I think now) how strange it was that they should have been so brave when they faced a horror, but such cowards when confronted by the palinode of fate.

“Then you must know that all are scourged alike. And yet the nearer to success, the worse the pain each feels. That is a law we cannot change.”

It is said that they who wander in darkness, and still more they who do so in a mist, merely scribe circles across the plain.

I think, raising me a second time; but for many things (of which that moment was for me the chief) there can be no second time.

On this ship I was a child again, knowing no more of the world around me than a child does.

It’s easy—very easy—to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place.”

I began to walk, fearing a hundred things that would never harm me and utterly ignorant of the real risks I ran.

what being can be stranger than oneself, or act more inexplicably?

“Do you mean that you do not understand me? And why should you? I do not understand myself, Severian, or you. Yet I am as I am,

“It is easy for those who need not judge, or judging need not toil for justice, to complain of inequity and talk of impartiality. When one must actually judge, as Tzadkiel does, he finds he cannot be just to one without being unjust to another.