Valar Morghulis

Every day, I search for an escape from the labyrinth. Every day, the Minotaur hunts me. Running only gives the bull more power. The only way out is inward. I must accept that at the center of the labyrinth, I will not face the Minotaur, but myself. I am the Minotaur. I am hunting myself.

Character-traits are, so to speak, secret psychoses.

We multiply diseases for delight, invent a shameful want, a horrid doubt, luxuriate in license, feed on night, make inward bedlam — and will not come out Why should we? Stripped of subtle complication, who could regard the sun except with fear? This is our shelter against contemplation, our only refuge from the plain and clear. Who would crawl out from under the obscure to stand defenseless in the sunny air? No terror of obliquity so sure as the most shining terror of despair to know how simple is our deepest need, how sharp, and how impossible to feed.