“You're mistaken,” I said. “I wasn't thinking about monomachy—or dying either.”
In my ear, too softly, I think, even for Hildegrin to hear, Dorcas said, “Yes, you were. Your face was full of beauty, of a kind of nobility. When the world is horrible, then thoughts are high, full of grace and greatness.”
I looked at her, thinking she was mocking me, but she was not.
“The world is filled half with evil and half with good. We can tilt it forward so that more good runs into our minds, or back, so that more runs into this.” A movement of her eyes took in all the lake. “But the quantities are the same, we change only their proportion here or there.”
-Gene Wolfe. The Shadow of the Torturer: Volume One of the Book of the New Sun. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980. (211-212)
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