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And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff adders, took up their load of machine and tube, their case of liquid melancholy and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door.

All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions.  These do not at the first appear to be much, when the matter is one of life and death- nay of more than either life or death.  Yet must we be satisfied; in the first place because we have to be- no other means is at our control- and secondly, because, after all, these things- traditions and superstitions- are everything.

The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.

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For tell me truly, has anyone even been able to imagine how something could be made from nothing?  Alas!  There is such an infinite difference between nothing and a single atom that the sharpest brain could not fathom it.  In order to escape this inexplicable labyrinth, you have to admit the eternity of matter as well as God, and then it is no longer necessary to admit a God because the universe could have existed without Him.

...He is brute, and more than brute: he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can within his range, direct the elements: the storm, the fog, the thunder...

He was a man who did not suffer but pleasured in sleepless nights of brooding on the great clock of the universe running down, or winding itself up, who could tell?

How odd to watch a mortal kindle Then to dwindle day by day. Knowing their bright souls are tinder And the wind will have its way. Would I could my own fire lend. What does your flickering portend?

But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people.  Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them.  I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.  Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured.  As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy.  Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways.  Or I listen at soda fountains, and you know what?"     "What?"     "People don't talk about anything.

Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much.  She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone.  Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid, while he looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they-- more beautiful than the richest of them-- but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask.

Narodny did not hate mechanization.  He was indifferent to it.  Being truly intelligent he hated nothing.  Also he was indifferent to the whole civilization man had developed and into which he had been born.  He had no feeling of kinship to humanity.  Outwardly, in body, he belonged to the species.  Not so in mind.  Like Loeb, a thousand years before, he considered mankind a race of crazy half-monkeys, intent upon suicide.  Now and then, out of the sea of lunatic mediocrity, a wave uplifted that held for a moment a light from the sun of truth-- but soon it sank back and the light was gone.  Quenched in the sea of stupidity.  He knew that he was one of those waves.

This kind of internal 'telepathic' intercourse, which was to serve me in all my wanderings, was at first difficult, ineffective, and painful.  But in time I came to be able to live through the experiences of my host with vividness and accuracy, while yet preserving my own individuality, my own critical intelligence, my own desires and fears.  Only when the other had come to realize my presence within him could he, by a special act of volition, keep particular thoughts secret from me.

A man dying of thirst gives up pity before his own life.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.  A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.  Or a garden planted.  Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

When he came to the surface he was weeping.  First they were involuntary and broken sobs.  Then he emptied himself out in an unleashed flow, feeling that something swollen and painful had burst inside of him.  She waited, scratching his head with the tips of her fingers, until his body got rid of the dark material that would not let him live.

My first mentor called me E'lir because I was clever and I knew it.  My first real lover called me Dulator because she liked the sound of it.  I have been called Shadicar, Lightfinger, and Six-String.  I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller.  I have earned those names.  Bought and paid for them.

With a fleeting grin he replied, 'No, Orion.  I have seen enough arrows flying through the air.  I have seen enough swordplay.  I yearn for peace, for an end to the pain and battles.'    'Wise men prefer peace to war,' I said.    'Then wise men are more rare than trees on the Gobi.'    'Peace will come, in time, High Khan.'    'Long after I have returned to my ancestors,' he said without a trace of bitterness.  It was merely a statement of fact.