Stephen Donaldson

No one person has the right to withhold knowledge from another. No one is wise enough.

Retribution—ah, my friend, retribution is the sweetest of all sweet dark dreams.

The answer to death was to make use of it rather than fall victim to it—master it by making it serve his goals, beliefs. This was not a good answer. But it was the only answer he had.

Yet this withholding of knowledge ran against every grain of his character. He believed intensely that the refusal to share knowledge demeaned both the denier and the denied.

“Are you wise, Unbeliever?”

“Who knows? If I am—wisdom is overrated.”

You know, where I come from, the people who did this to a forest would be called pioneers—a very special breed of heroes, since instead of killing other human beings they concentrate on slaughtering nature itself.

“We will soon know.”

“Yes, indeed,” Covenant muttered. “Only I hate surprises. You never know when one of them is going to ruin your life.”

She said that it is the responsibility of the living to justify the sacrifices of the dead. Otherwise their deaths have no meaning.

“Are you so ashamed of what you were?”

Bannon cocked a white eyebrow at the question, as if it came close to the truth. “I am not shamed,” he said distinctly. “But I am saddened that so many centuries were required to teach us the limits of our worth. We went too far, in pride and folly. Mortal men should not give up wives and sleep and death for any service—less the face of failure become too abhorrent to be endured.”

I was trying to give her something, make it up to her somehow. But that doesn’t work. When you’ve hurt someone that badly, you can’t go around giving them gifts. That’s arrogant and cruel.

I have no special virtue to make me resent him. One must have strength in order to judge the weakness of others. I am not so mighty.

Abruptly Loerya joined the probing. “And if there is no Creator? Or if the creation is untended?”

“Then who is there to reproach us? We provide the meaning of our own lives. If we serve the Land purely to the furthest limit of our abilities, what more can we ask of ourselves?”