After centuries and centuries of building, he had learned exactly how it all had to be done. He believed in a law of equalities which ordained a perfect balance. For everything that was raised, something had to fall, and there was no free form, since all form had shadow and counterpart. Hence his opposition. He respected them and had no desire to win them over, for that would have implied that he believed they were fighting without a reason. Their actions, too, were just, and he might well have been on their side. But he wasn’t, for his task was to move things forward, and to do this he had to fight them. He was fond of saying that there had never been a builder who had not understood war.

the inability to control one’s train of thought has important real world consequences

Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run.

Language is the only homeland.