To fall suddenly sick when you have never been ill is a hard lesson. If it teaches anything, it teaches you that you must not trust to the thing you … - Tanith Lee

It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.

The dark storyteller did not look about. He said: “You have presumed the gods value man so much that they will hurry to his rescue. I think you misjudge the gods.”
“And you,” declared the philosopher sternly, “suggest that they are merely as stones.”
“There, I admit, I have maligned them. For if you strike a stone, it may disgorge a stream of water, or a precious jewel. Or you may build a house from it, or scratch words on its surface with a knife. Stones can be serviceable to men.”

Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.