“Anacho, my friend,” said Reith, “you have a great deal to learn. The process will come as an appalling shock to you.” - Jack Vance

Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious.… The mystery is resolved, the solution made known. “Of course, it is obvious!” comes the chorus. A word about the obvious: it is always obvious.… The common mind transposed the sequence, letting the mystery generate the solution. This is logic in reverse; actually the mystery relates to the solution as the foam relates to the beer.…

“The Iszics seem to have small understanding of intellectual curiosity,” observed Farr.
“To compensate, we have a large understanding of rapacity, larceny, brain-picking and exploitation.

If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.