Ramzi Ghadban’s Reviews > The Urth of the New Sun > Status Update

"The tongues of men are older than our drowned land; and it seems strange that in so great a time no words have been found for the pauses in speech, which have each their own quality, as well as a certain length."

"Most do not know it, but it is difficult to learn to strike another human being with all one's force; some ancient instinct makes even the most brutal soften the blow."

"[…] I have read that a region of mist separates the living from the dead, and that the forms we
call ghosts are nothing more than the remnants of this barrier of mist clinging to their faces and their garments."

"Yours is a race of pawns. […] You move forward only, unless we move you back to begin the game again. But not all the pieces on the board are pawns."

"So do future things make themselves known in the past. A child who will someday be wise is a wise child; and many who will be doomed carry their dooms in their faces, so that those who can see even a short way into the future find it there and turn away their eyes."

"Those who have never fought suppose that the deserter who flies the field is consumed by shame. He is not, or he would not desert; with only trifling exceptions, battles are fought by cowards afraid to run. And it was just so with me."

"Pain brought me to myself. Perhaps that is what pain is for, or perhaps it is only the chain forged to bind us to the eternal present, forged in a smithy we can but guess at, by a smith we do not know."