“Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter.They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates.Sapphique was the man. He had one riddle left. He said, "What is the Key that unlocks the heart?"For a day Incarceron thought. For two days. For three. Then it said, "If I ever knew the answer, I have forgotten it."--Sapphique in the Tunnels of Madness”

“I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored”

“And the more I thought about it, the more I dug out of memory things I had overlooked or forgotten. I realized then that a man who had lived only a day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.”

“In the Sapient tongue he said softly, ‘Tellme, Master, did you know Incarceron was tiny?’‘Is it?’ Sapphique replied in the same language, his greeneyes as he looked up lit by deep points of flame. ‘To you,perhaps. Not to its Prisoners. Every prison is a universe forits inmates. And think, Jared Sapiens. Might not the Realmalso be tiny, swinging from the watchchain of some being ina world even vaster?”

“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.”

“Rix stroked the Glove. "There was a garden and a tree grew there with golden apples and if you ate one of them, you knew everything. And then Sapphique climbed over the fense and killed the many-headed monster and picked the apple, because he wanted to know, you see. He wanted to know how to Escape.""Right." She had wriggled back. She was close to his pocked face."And a snake came out of the grass and it said, 'Oh go on, eat the apple. I dare you.' And he stopped then with it to his mouth because he knew the snake was Incarceron."Keiro groaned. "Let me...""Put the Glove away, Rix. Or give it to me."His fingers caressed its dark scales. "And because if he ate it he would know how small he was. How much of a nothing he was. He would see himself as a speck in the vastness of the Prison.""So he didn't eat it, right?”