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

Every Arrabin desperately asserts his individuality, with personal tricks and fads. A futile kind of life, no doubt, but isn’t all life futile?

There is too much knowledge already in the world; we use facts as crutches, to the impoverishment of our senses. Facts are falsehoods; logic is deceit. I know a single system of communication: the declaiming of poetry.

“Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.”