I am terrified at the sound of my own huge voice in the darkness. I stand there shaking from head to foot, moved to the deep-sea depths of my being, like a creature thrown into an audience with thunder. (Chapter 1)

I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly imposed our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. (Chapter 2)

The leaders on both sides held their javelins high in both hands and shook them, howling their lungs out. Terrible threats, from the few words I could catch. Things about their fathers and their fathers’ fathers, things about justice and honor and lawful revenge—their throats swollen, their eyes rolling like a newborn colt’s, sweat running down their shoulders. Then they would fight. (Chapter 3)

If the ideas of art were beautiful, that was art’s fault, not the Shaper... (Chapter 4)