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

“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,

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

“Is all the world a war of good and bad? Have you not thought it might be something more?”

But they don’t really do anything, and in their hearts they know it. They’re afraid to use their power, or at least the best of them are, knowing they can’t use it wisely.”

“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.

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.

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.”