"No exercise of will can make any of us other than what we are, or more than marginally better than who we are."

“Now that I'm a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that’s what pleases me.”

“Martel still did not want to believe in it, but brute experience of it forced him to, whatever his preferences.”

“Actually, there are never motives behind actions. All actions are fixed. What we call motives evidently are rationalizations by the helpless observing consciousness, which is intelligent enough to smell an event coming—and, since it cannot avert the event, instead cooks up reasons for wanting it to happen...or ascribes it to the malice of God or man.”

“He was getting to be a little old for combat or for princesses, but what was worse, he had become a lot more cynical without having become even slightly the wiser.”

“In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!”

“I suppose you burned the library—barbarians always do.”