“That’s the city hall,” he said. “The Mayor lives upstairs, where he can, ha ha, guard the city funds.” - Jack Vance

I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.

If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.

You have no concept of Magarak’s reality; you refuse to think; you live by ready-made emotional doctrines—a substitute for thought. What is worse, you try to wrench reality to fit your ideas.