“I think eulogies are wasted on the dead. It’s the living who need to hear kind words spoken about them.”

“Did I hear that right? Did someone say ice cream? It’s an odd thing to say in the middle of a eulogy, but hell yes, I could go for some ice cream. We could take a break, because it’s not like this guy won’t still be dead in a half an hour.”

“It’s not words that fail, it’s the people who wield them. We have no power over life and death, we are subject to pain and disease and misery, but we command words. When you think about it, words are all we really have.”

“Human beings who leave behind them no great achievements, but only a series of small kindnesses, have not had wasted lives”

“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” ~spoken by Augustus McCrae”

“[T]he very existence of such powers argues a counterforce. We call powers of the first kind dark, though they may use a species of deadly light... and we call those of the second kind bright, though I think that they may at times employ darkness, as a good man nevertheless draws the curtains of his bed to sleep. Yet there is truth to the talk of darkness and light, because it shows plainly that one implies the other. The tale I read to little Severian said that the universe was but a long word of the Increate's. We, then, are syllables of that word. But the speaking of any word is futile unless there are other words, words that are not spoken. If a beast has but one cry, the cry tells nothing; and even the wind has a multitude of voices, so that those who sit indoors may hear it and know if the weather is tumultuous or mild. The powers we call dark seem to me to be the words the Increate did not speak... and these words must be maintained in a quasi-existence, if the other word, the word spoken is to be distinguished. What is not said can be important - but what is said is more important... And if the seekers after dark things find them, may not the seekers after bright find them as well? And are they not more apt to hand their wisdom on?”