The Broken God (The Neverness Cycle Book 2)

by David Zindell

For the Alaloi, as for all peoples, words literally create things, or rather, they create the way our minds divide and categorize the indivisible wholeness of the world into things. Too often, words determine what we do and do not see.

(The Fravashi do not like to teach things. Their whole art has evolved to find a way of teaching, rather than things to teach. In fact, the untranslatable Fravashi word for learning means something like ‘The Way’.)

And so, when you look at the world, you put on the goggles of custom, habit, and tribal wisdoms lest the truth make you insane.

‘Fayeth defines it as the superposition of two or more conflicting theories, ideas or sets of knowledge in order to see the intersection, which is called the comparative truth.’

Shibui: a kind of beauty that only time can reveal. Shibui was the subtle beauty of grey and brown moss on an old rock. And the taste of an old wine which recalled a ripening of grapes and the perfect balance of sun, wind and rain—that too was shibui.

The starting point of Architect—or Edic—understanding is the recognition that God is created after the image of man. This idea views man and God as joined with one another through a mysterious connection. Man, out of hubris, wanted an image formed of himself as a perfected and potentially infinite God. In that man is reflected in God, he makes himself a partner in this self–realization. Man and God belong so closely to one another that one can say that they are intended for each other. Man finds his fulfilment in God.

Trillions of people, trillions of Pedars—they fill the stars across the galaxy with copies of themselves and call this the fulfilment of man’s destiny. But no, it’s not. It’s only multiplication by zero.’

It had been a moment of complete freedom, and yet, paradoxically, of complete surrender to the forces of life.

it is always easier to stand beneath the light of another than to shine with one’s own.

This is also said: you must consume yourself in your own flame; how could you wish to become new unless you had first become ashes?

‘When I was a boy, my found–father taught me that jealousy is shaida. It poisons the soul.’

To Old Father, Danlo said, ‘It is good to see you, sir. You seem … much the same.’ ‘Ahhh,’ Old Father said. ‘Ohhh—the same, only more so.’