# Quote — Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

> To those who have preceded me in the study of the posthistoric world, and particularly to those collectors—too numerous to name here—who have permitted me to examine artifacts surviving so many centuries of futurity, and most especially to those who have allowed me to visit and photograph the era's few extant buildings, I am truly grateful.

- Author: [Gene Wolfe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe.md)
- Book: [The Shadow of the Torturer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-shadow-of-the-torturer.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun#The_Shadow_of_the_Torturer_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-shadow-of-the-torturer/to-those-who

## More from this book

> The Increate maintains all things in order surely; and the theologicans say light is his shadow. Must it not be then that in darkness order grows ever less? [...] Perhaps when night closes our eyes there is less order than we believe. Perhaps, indeed, it is this lack of order we perceive as darkness, a randomization of the waves of energy (like the sea), the fields of energy (like a farm) that appear to our deluded eyes—set by light in an order of which they themselves are incapable—to be the real world.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-shadow-of-the-torturer/the-increate-maintains.md)

> The soldiers forced him to his knees and I lifted my sword, forever blotting out the sun.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-shadow-of-the-torturer/the-soldiers-forced.md)

> Art had been lavished upon her; but it is the function of art to render attractive and significant those things that without it would not be so, and so art had nothing to give her.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-shadow-of-the-torturer/art-had-been.md)