"Who would dare invite such a smoke? To some it might be healing, but to others, bane. Breathed in at the nostrils, it seemed to fill the eyes and ears and brain. To a man who knew many things, it would reveal many more, to a man who knew little it would reveal too much. Its name was self-knowledge."

“I had made vows and to spare, but the present cannot be ruled forever by the past.”

“Such an accusation is as stupid as it is absurd.”

“Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.”

“Men cried to their gods. In the morning they would slay each other; by night, fresh from the battlefield, they raved before unreplying altars. So they came to hate even the gods, and smashed their images and defiled their sanctums. “There are no gods!” they cried. “Then who has done this thing to us?”

“I found a glimmering brown skull in the snow. I could not tell if it was mortal or god, and there seemed a sobering moral in that.”

“It was as easy to be alone with six kin as it is to be alone by yourself, and maybe easier.”