# Quote — Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor

> The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it.

- Author: [Gene Wolfe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe.md)
- Book: [The Sword of the Lictor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-sword-of-the-lictor.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun#The_Sword_of_the_Lictor_(1982)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-sword-of-the-lictor/the-brown-book

## More from this book

> [T]he very existence of such powers argues a counterforce. We call powers of the first kind dark, though they may use a species of deadly light... and we call those of the second kind bright, though I think that they may at times employ darkness, as a good man nevertheless draws the curtains of his bed to sleep. Yet there is truth to the talk of darkness and light, because it shows plainly that one implies the other. The tale I read to little Severian said that the universe was but a long word of the Increate's. We, then, are syllables of that word. But the speaking of any word is futile unless there are other words, words that are not spoken. If a beast has but one cry, the cry tells nothing; and even the wind has a multitude of voices, so that those who sit indoors may hear it and know if the weather is tumultuous or mild. The powers we call dark seem to me to be the words the Increate did not speak... and these words must be maintained in a quasi-existence, if the other word, the word spoken is to be distinguished. What is not said can be important - but what is said is more important... And if the seekers after dark things find them, may not the seekers after bright find them as well? And are they not more apt to hand their wisdom on?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-sword-of-the-lictor/t-he-very-existence.md)

> Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain.
>
> I knew then, on the arm of that giant figure, the ambition to conquer time, an ambition beside which the desire of the distant suns is only the lust of some petty, feathered chieftain to subjugate some other tribe.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-sword-of-the-lictor/time-itself-is-a-thing.md)

> An angel is often only a demon who stands between us and our enemy.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gene-wolfe/the-sword-of-the-lictor/an-angel-is-often.md)