Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun, #1-2)

by Gene Wolfe

It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.

It is my nature, my joy and my curse, to forget nothing. Every rattling chain and whistling wind, every sight, smell, and taste, remains changeless in my mind, and though I know it is not so with everyone, I cannot imagine what it can mean to be otherwise, as if one had slept when in fact an experience is merely remote.

“Severian. I am a torturer. Or rather, I am an apprentice of the torturers, Liege. Of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence.”

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

“Where I put you, there you lie, Never let a stranger spy, Like glass grow to any eye, Not of me. Here be safe, never leave it, Should a hand come, deceive it, Let strange eyes not believe it, Till I see.”

incantation

It was in this instant of confusion that I realized for the first time that I am in some degree insane.

Sure is

“Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it?”

So I became, in appearance at least, a pilgrim bound for some vague northern shrine. Have I said that time turns our lies into truths?

Beautiful