“You have not accepted my advice.” Fair shrugged. “You asked me to remain ignorant, to accept my stupidity and ineptitude.” - Jack Vance

“No,” said Travec, “religions, cults, rituals—forms of insanity—don’t interest me.”

This is an insane society, constrained by punctilio as a rotten egg is held by its shell.

“I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
“You have no friends?”
“No.”
“And what of the future?”
“The future stops at ‘now’.”
“As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
“What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
“Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea. Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
“I don’t know.”
Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”
Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”