Awake in the Night Land Quotes

“The process of thinking itself requires us to view the universe in the direction of entropy, since an abstraction always involves information loss, since symbols 'abstract' complexity from observed objects.”
― John C. Wright, Awake in the Night Land

“The Blue Man smiled. “Why not wipe out all life in the great dark beyond? All other life, that is. All the competition. They did not overlook or forget about the Earth! They cleared the fields for her. Then they traveled backward in time to restart the universe with Man on top, right at the initial condition set. Why not?”
― John C. Wright, Awake in the Night Land

“None within this Last Redoubt can be alone. Our enemies are ever with us, unsleeping, tireless, horrid.”
― John C. Wright, Awake in the Night Land

“Nothing I have ever read before or since contains such a mood of pure unearthliness. Wraiths and Dark Lords and devils from fantasy stories seem quaint and old-fashioned, and are more likely to invoke nostalgia rather than awe; aliens from science fiction stories share our laws of nature, and come from our universe. The inhuman presences and monsters of the Night Land, on the other hand, are cloaked in impenetrable mystery.”
― John C. Wright, Awake in the Night Land

“In the opening paragraphs of the first chapter, the narrator is speaking casually to Mirdath the Beautiful, a maiden of the gentry of the English rural countryside. A more comfortable and bucolic setting cannot be imagined. Then, when he says, 'It is an elf night; the Towers of Sleep rise' she answers by speaking of the Moon-Garden, the City of Twilight, and the Tree with the Great Painted Head. By that word she reveals that she is like him: a soul that is more than mortal, that has lived other lives in other cycles of reincarnation, dimly half-forgotten. She and he are both travelers from moon-lit elfin lands or empires of cloudy nightmare, and they hail from places far beyond the little fields we know, older than human history: they have seen the light of other suns, other days. They dance to music we cannot hear. No one of their own time will understand them.”
― John C. Wright, Awake in the Night Land

“We are men born in a land of eternal darkness. We grope where we cannot see clearly. Why mistrust what ancient books say? Why mistrust what our souls say? Our forefathers gave us this lamp, and the flame was lit in brighter days, when men saw further. I agree the lamp-light of such far-off lore, is dim for us; but surely that proves it to be folly, not wisdom, to cast the lamp aside: for then we are blind.”
― John C. Wright, Awake in the Night Land