The authority of superior knowledge was different in kind from the authority of assumed power. Still, he felt a little awkward assuming it. - Michael Swanwick

The universe has backed you into another corner—you can kill or die. There are no other choices. Doesn’t that make you angry? Doesn’t it make you want revenge? Or are you going to truckle to Dame Fate one more time, to be crushed and for all I know resurrected to run the maze of torment again and yet again? Stand up on your hind legs for once!

It really is a pity. Esme was so full of curiosity and enthusiasm when she was a child. She’d make a great biologist. But it was her misfortune to be born wealthy. She had dreams. But her parents had too much money to allow that.

“Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man’s mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.”
He rattled his glass.
Nathan refilled it.
Faust drank. “But to ask why,” he continued, “implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.”
He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass.
He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.