Games Untold Quotes

Est unus ex nobis. Nos defendat eius. It goes both ways.

Yamamoto sensed a feeling of culmination about the huge success of the first strike, and the same incisive intuition that guided his brilliant moves at the gaming tables told him what the next move on the bridge of Akagi would be. In (Vice Admiral) Nagumo he knew his man. Nagumo had never been committed to the Pearl Harbor mission. He had not been Yamamoto’s choice to command the Striking Force; his assignment was the decision of the Navy Ministry in Tokyo, based on seniority. While the exultation of the officers and sailors on his staff swirled around him, Yamamoto sat quietly. Finally, he fixed a steely gaze on his chief of staff, and in a low, intense voice: “Admiral Nagumo is going to withdraw.

I loved you,” he whispered, “when the world was pain and the only thing that made sense was your eyes. I loved you before I knew to hate myself, and I have loved you every day since.

For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds. Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…” Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds— promising untold opportunities—beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.

Nash moves across the aisle to sit next to me. He puts his hand under my chin and raises my eyes to meet his. “Don’t you ever apologize for the things you’ve survived.

No man can say with certainty what the future may hold. But perhaps, in knowing what has already transpired, we can all do our part to avoid the mistakes of our forebears, to emulate their successes, and to create a world more harmonious for our children and their children, for generations to come.

Like the sun and the moon I loved her. Saint Avery. Until death and beyond.

Glory may be everlasting, yet it is fleeting as well—soon forgotten in the aftermath of even the most famous of victories if they lead to greater disasters.

Fear wasn’t just ice in your veins or a beast at your throat. Fear was loving someone so fiercely that there was no point in your heart beating if hers did not.

You are fiendish, Avery Kylie Grambs. As far as distractions go, that one wasn't even fair." I shrugged. "I play dirty.

If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening.

IT IS SAID with truth that every building is constructed stone by stone, and the same may be said of knowledge, extracted and compiled by many learned men, each of whom builds upon the works of those who preceded him. What one of them does not know is known to another, and little remains truly unknown if one seeks far enough.

When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come,

We know, for instance, that Americans have forcefully resisted extending the right to vote; those in power have disenfranchised blacks, women, and the poor in myriad ways. We know, too, that women historically have had fewer civil protections than corporations. Instead of a thoroughgoing democracy, Americans have settled for democratic stagecraft: high-sounding rhetoric, magnified, and political leaders dressing down at barbecues or heading out to hunt game.

Too many peoples have traveled back and forth, and too many legends and tales have mingled.

You're Hawthornes," the old man said. "If you're going to do something- and I do consider wrestling to be something- then do it well. Do it right.

This is exactly why I am an optimist. I’ve always had to be one. Sometimes, believing the best in people who don’t deserve it, believing that they love you even if they don’ —sometimes, that’s all a person can do to survive.

Acceptance of the danger is of the essence for playing a quality sport.

Sometimes fate just plays a strange game of Scrabble with you.

and all his smiles belong to her and her alone.

Like all tales, it takes on the attributes that make it most appealing to those who tell it.

Dance with me, you beautiful bitch.

Join us. Play the game. It will bring you an untold number of rewards and you will finally have some direction and purpose in your lives. Take control of yourselves and those around you. Bend them to your will and all worldly pleasures will be yours...

You may dress an ironman in silks and velvets, teach him to read and write and give him books, instruct him in chivalry and courtesy and the mysteries of the Faith,” writes Archmaester Haereg, “but when you look into his eyes, the sea will still be there, cold and grey and cruel.

As the next thousand years unfold—and the thousands beyond that—many more will be born, and live, and die. And history will continue to unfold, as strange and complex and compelling as what my humble pen was able to lay before you

They antagonised Julian Assange over six lines from OT VII and he ended up releasing 612 pages’ worth of all the OT levels. In

Found you,” I said. Once upon a time, I’d been a more gracious winner, but now I relished my victories like a Hawthorne.

it was another of the Great Bastards: Ser Aegor Rivers, called Bittersteel. Perhaps it was his Bracken blood that made Aegor so choleric and so quick to take offense. Perhaps it was the ignominious fall of the

There are few things as tragic as when we tacitly agree to the notion that our unchangeable truth is somehow invalid. Less than. Broken. Wrong. That pretending is necessary for professional opportunity or personal acceptance. I’ve done it a million times in ways large and small, and I can tell you this: trying to hide in plain sight is frustrating, disorienting, isolating—an exhausting game of (only possible) short-term gains in exchange for very-certain long-term exclusion. When we agree to play, we not only hide and cast doubt upon our experiences. We’ve willingly participated in the invalidation of ourselves.

The battle proved a victory—at least in part—and soon after, his grandfather finally died, and Ser Elmo became Lord of Riverrun. But he did not long enjoy his station; he died on the march forty-nine days later, leaving his young son, Ser Kermit, to succeed him.

There is a Japanese belief that business is temporal, whereas relationships are eternal. That’s true. One day you compete. The next day you partner. One day someone is your subordinate; the next day he or she may be your superior. At its finest, business is friendly competition, just like a game of tennis. As

Yet there was one problem: at the age of nine-and-ten, Laenor preferred the company of squires of his own age, and was said never to have known a woman intimately, nor to have any bastards. But to this, Grand Maester Mellos was said to have remarked, “What of it? I am not fond of fish, but when fish is served, I eat it.

Of all the queer and fabulous denizens of the Shivering Sea, however, the greatest are the ice dragons. These colossal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valyria, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky. Whereas common dragons (if any dragon can truly be said to be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat.

The more he laughs and gives, the more they despise him.

He was stone, hard and strong and unmoving. He was the wind, which rages and howls and blows this way and that.

Dorne has danced with dragons before, and I would sooner sleep with scorpions.

dark gods beneath the ground in the Frostfangs,

every building is constructed stone by stone, and the same may be said of knowledge,

Anything is possible,” Kaylie said, “when you love someone with no regrets.

Like the sun and the moon I loved her. Saint Avery. Until death and beyond.

Always read the small print, Heiress.

Our kind of game.

Hubbard was not just gunning for contemporary mental health practitioners; he claimed that 75 million years ago, psychiatrists helped carry out genocide in the Galactic Confederacy.

Vermax left a clutch of eggs somewhere in the depths of Winterfell’s crypts, where the waters of the hot springs run close to the walls, while his rider treated with Cregan Stark at the start of the Dance of the Dragons. As Archmaester Gyldayn notes in his fragmentary history, there is no record that Vermax ever laid so much as a single egg, suggesting the dragon was

This was a mental game as much as a physical challenge, designed to reinforce the fact that staying focused and motivated is absolutely critical to mission success and basic survival in war.

Smartphone makers sought deeper ties with retail buyers by adding ring tones, games, Web browsers, and other applications to their phones. Carriers, however, wanted this business to themselves. If they couldn’t sell applications within their “walled gardens,” carriers worried they would be reduced to mere utilities or “dumb pipes” carrying data and voice traffic. Nokia learned the hard way just how ferociously carriers could defend their turf. In the late 1990s the Finnish phone maker launched Club Nokia, a Web-based portal that allowed customers to buy and download

Doctors in 1945 would report that one of Berlin's children's favorite games was 'rape.' When they saw a man in uniform--even a Salvation Army uniform--they would start screaming hysterically.

Maesters and other scholars alike have puzzled over the greatest of the engimas of Sothoryos, the ancient city of Yeen. A ruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavy that it would require a dozen elephants to move them, Yeen has remained a desolation for many thousands of years, yet the jungle that surrounds it on every side has scarce touched it. (“A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter, ” Nymeria is supposed to have said when she laid eyes on it, if the tales are true). Every attempt to rebuild or resettle Yeen has ended in horror.

Savage Sam Tarly, whose sword, Heartsbane, was said to be red from hilt to point after the dozens of Dornishmen he cut down in the course of the Vulture Hunt, as the chase after the Vulture King became known.

Hubbard had issued a 12-point policy governing Scientology Finances. Points A and J were both ‘MAKE MONEY’, point K was ‘MAKE MORE MONEY’, the final point was ‘MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MONEY’.46

to wed his eldest daughter, Calla, to Aegor. Bitter his steel may have been, but worse was his tongue. He spilled poison in Daemon’s ear, and with him came the clamoring of other knights and lords with grievances.

The Westeros of Aegon’s youth was divided into seven quarrelsome kingdoms, and there was hardly a time when two or three of these kingdoms were not at war with one another. The vast, cold, stony North was ruled by the Starks of Winterfell. In the deserts of Dorne, the Martell princes held sway. The gold-rich westerlands were ruled by the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the fertile Reach by the Gardeners of Highgarden. The Vale, the Fingers, and the Mountains of the Moon belonged to House Arryn … but the most belligerent kings of Aegon’s time were the two whose realms lay closest to Dragonstone, Harren the Black and Argilac the Arrogant.

shopping became a game of chance played with a string avoska, or “what-if” bag, carried in the hope of stumbling upon a store recently stocked with anything useful—whether sugar, toilet paper, or canned ratatouille from Czechoslovakia.

Septon Barth’s claim that the Valyrians came to Westeros because their priests prophesied that the Doom of Man would come out of the land beyond the narrow sea can safely be dismissed as nonsense, as can many of Barth’s queerer beliefs and suppositions.

When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come,” King Garth IX said famously. “If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening.” King

The incorporeal newness that so intoxicated the earliest women online has morphed; it has become what the games critic Katherine Cross aptly calls a "Möbius strip of reality and unreality," in which Internet culture "becomes real when it is convenient and unreal when it is not; real enough to hurt people in, unreal enough to justify doing so.

The men were famous once. Some of them still are. They were the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team and Brooks had brought them together, 24 summers before. He had picked them and provoked them and pushed them, sometimes irritating them and often infuriating them by his hardness and his aloofness, his scathing rebukes and his unrelenting mind games.

Hubbard’s stint in Queensland is better characterised as overbearing, overzealous and over too soon. Hubbard would end up portraying himself as a war hero who helped save Australia from the Japanese. His arrival, his stay and his departure would all become subject of Scientology mythmaking. But the truth is that Hubbard was sent home from Brisbane in disgrace. When

Theron’s rather inchoate manuscript Strange Stone postulates that both fortress and seat might be the work of a queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women. These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown, he argues, whilst their terrible fathers are the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.

Camped somewhere deep in an impenetrable crag of the immense Powder River Country during the late autumn of 1856, more than likely in the shadow of the sacred Black Hills, one imagines the thirty-five-year-old Red Cloud stepping from his tepee to listen to the bugle of a bull elk in its seasonal rut. Around him women haul water from a crystalline stream as cottonwood smoke rises from scores of cook fires and coils toward a sky the color of brushed aluminum. The wind sighs, and a smile creases his face as he observes a pack of mounted teenagers collect wagers in preparation for the Moccasin Game, or perhaps a rough round of Shinny. His gaze follows the grace and dexterity of one boy in particular, a slender sixteen-year-old with lupine eyes. The boy is Crazy Horse, and the war leader of the Bad Faces makes a mental not to keep tabs on this one.

I mean to give the smallfolk peace and food and justice. If that will not suffice to win their love, let Mushroom make a progress. Or perhaps we might send a dancing bear. Someone once told me that the commons love nothing half so much as dancing bears. You may call a halt to this feast tonight as well. Send the lords home to their own keeps and give the food to the hungry. Full bellies and dancing bears shall be my policy. - Aegon III

Later during the Dance, Ser Elmo Tully led the riverlords into battle at Second Tumbleton, but on the side of Queen Rhaenyra rather than King Aegon II, whom his grandsire had favored. The battle proved a victory—at least in part—and soon after, his grandfather finally died, and Ser Elmo became Lord of Riverrun. But he did not long enjoy his station; he died on the march forty-nine days later, leaving his young son, Ser Kermit, to succeed him.

Hockey is a club that holds its members tightly, the bond forged by shared hardship and mutual passion, by every trip to the pond, where your feet hurt and your face is cold and you might get a stick in the ribs or a puck in the mouth, and you still can’t wait to get back out there because you are smitten with the sound of blades scraping against ice and pucks clacking off sticks, and with the game’s speed and ever-changing geometry. It has a way of becoming the center of your life even when you’re not on the ice.

Brooks wanted to abandon the traditional, linear, dump-and-chase style of hockey that had held sway in North America forever. He wanted to attack the vaunted Russians with their own game, skating with them and weaving with them, stride for high-flying stride. He wanted to play physical, un-yielding hockey to be sure, but he also wanted fast, skilled players who would flourish on the Olympic ice sheet (which is 15 feet wider than NHL rinks) and be able to move and keep possession of the puck and be in such phenomenal condition that they would be the fresher team at the end.

So how did it come to this? Why did the Australian government have to provide a protection visa for José on the grounds that a religious organisation it deems a tax-exempt charity had trafficked him? How could a church that claims to believe in freedom and human rights enslave and traffic its members? How could a church that in its own religious creed says ‘that all men have inalienable rights to their own lives’ separate a loving couple who wanted to get married and have a child, and force the woman to have an abortion? How could a church use Australia as a penal colony in the 21st century? To understand the madness of modern-day Scientology, you need to go back to the source, and the thinking that marked its very beginning.

On Dorne and the North: One is hot and one is cold, yet these ancient kingdoms of sand and snow are set apart from the rest of Westeros by history, culture, and tradition. Both are thinly peopled compared to the lands betwixt. Both cling stubbornly to their own laws and their own traditions. Neither was ever truly conquered by the dragons. The king in the North accepted Aegon Targaryen as his overlord peaceably, whilst Dorne resisted the might of the Targaryens valiantly for almost two hundred years, before finally submitting to the Iron Throne through marriage. Dornishmen and Northmen alike are derided as savages by the ignorant of the five 'civilized' kingdoms, and celebrated for their valor by those who have crossed swords with them.

His palace was a tent, his throne a saddle.

Lady Ellyn must surely be a sorceress, for she has made it rain inside the Rock all year.

There is always more to know, more to see, more to learn. The world is vast and wondrous strange, and there are more things beneath the stars than even the archmaesters of the Citadel can dream.

The man who honors all the gods honors none at all.

Wars are bad for trade.

Speaking of baseball, a small group of Nautilus crew members arrived during a game at Yankee Stadium. Even though the famous slugger Mickey Mantle was at bat, the crowd stood and gave the submariners a standing ovation.

Though many a savage people dwelt in the hills and forests around Mother Rhoyne, all knew better than to molest the river folk.

each with its own prince … or princess, for amongst these river folk, women were regarded as the equals of men.

But if Hubbard really did cure himself of his mythical injuries by 1947, why was he still claiming a part disability pension? Why did he write to Veterans Administration in October of the same year saying he’d been ‘trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life’ and asking for help paying for psychiatric treatment? Why did he continue to lobby for an increase to his pension over this period of time? And why was it the case that he claimed a disability pension for decades afterwards?46 Some

less than two months in Australia Hubbard had racked up debts, lost a machine gun, upset the top brass and been sent home. Yet two decades later, Hubbard would portray his time in Brisbane as something Australians should be grateful for. In a statement to the press he said, ‘In 1942, as the senior US naval officer in Northern Australia, by a fluke of fate, I helped save them from the Japanese.’15 The

common technique used by cults to brainwash their followers is gradual immersion in cult mythology and philosophy. To put it bluntly, it is often advisable to keep the more wacko beliefs and practices out of your new recruit’s faces until they are sufficiently wacko themselves. Now, the problem for the Church of Scientology is that on the wacko scale the higher level works of Ron hover somewhere near the figure 10. To an outsider it is an immediate farse [sic]. But to a follower who has become psychologically dependent on the Church’s philosophy & society and invested thousands and thousands of dollars in doing so, it is just another step on the road to mental subservience. What

However, Scientology was expert at manipulating its image to accommodate just about anyone. ‘We were assured by almost everyone we met,’ Daroesman says, ‘including ministers of the church such as Peter Sparshott, Martin Bentley and David Graham – that it wasn’t really a religion but that it had to adopt the practices and appearance of a religion so that the government would not harass it.’56 Lionel

Months later, I would still catch myself scratching my head, wondering what had possessed Meadows to deliver incriminating evidence right into the hands of congressional investigators. Did he simply have an awful legal team? Were the texts provided by mistake? Could he have actually wanted to assist our work? Or was Meadows trying to play some kind of chess game with the select committee? Did he figure he could appear to be cooperating or maybe even make some sort of deal while not handing over anything useful? I tend to think it was the latter. There were multiple indications that—despite how much he turned over to the committee—Meadows was trying to keep information from us.

Who scouts through wilderness and cold And finds the stone that turns to gold, The gems of Nature's wealth untold-- The Engineer. Who gets five paltry plunks per day To give the thing he finds away To some one else who makes it pay-- The Engineer. Who's heart is always in the game, When trouble comes it's just the same, But when it comes, who gets the blame? The Engineer. - Robert Elmer Horton (Water Power and Water Supply Preliminaries, 1913, Michigan Engineer)

This moment feels so dreadfully sore, Like a prickly thorn that I can't ignore. It's excruciating, oh how it stings, Like a bee's sharp sting that really zings. Pain, oh pain, it's part of the game, In life's grand adventure, it's never the same. From bumps and bruises to a broken heart, Pain finds a way to play its part. It sneaks up on us, oh yes it does, With a sting and a throb, just because. But Let me pamper myself with care so fine, In this very moment, oh how divine! With utmost tenderness, I shall embrace, A moment of self-love, at my own pace! I require some mercy, oh yes indeed, To grant myself kindness, in word and in deed. In this world so vast, with troubles untold, I seek solace and grace, to have and to hold.

land

Charity is a game of convenience, after all; if our purses do not feel significantly lighter and our meals continue to fill our stomachs to brimming, then we are glad to appear benevolent in the eyes of God. But we refuse to suffer even the faintest pinprick at its hands. If it gives us pain, then it is no longer Charity that begs at our door but Exploitation, and, in her

I closed the book and placed it back inside the chest. My thoughts were swirling around those words. What could they have possibly meant? It seemed like it was written by another player, but how could it have made its way to my single-player world? Was someone tampering with my game? That would explain a lot of the glitches I had encountered.

You are not worthy. Not yet. What is the game you are playing? You don’t even know. If you want to see this to the end, You will follow.

seemed odd that Scott would risk damaging what

Jase, Mia, and I arrived at the hospital early the next morning to what seemed like a replay of Mia’s surgery one year earlier--same hospital, same preoperative area, and same room setup. Over the next few minutes, her room filled up with people, including Reed and his girlfriend of three and a half years, Brighton, who had both driven in from college. Mia loves being silly with them, and I snapped a picture of the three of them. Mia’s cousins also surrounded her to play a game of Old Maid, thanks to the deck Mamaw Kay pulled out of her purse. Everyone was cracking jokes, taking pictures, and, well, just being themselves. All this activity helped keep Mia, as well as me and Jase, thinking positively and staying upbeat. Mia opted to not take the goofy juice this time. She told me she wanted to be awake and alert so she could tell everyone goodbye as she was being rolled back through the operating doors. Whoa! I wasn’t so sure about this. Jase thought it was very brave of her and that we should let her do it. Reluctantly, I agreed. Dr. Sykes, the anesthesiologist, said he would tell her every single thing he was going to do before he gave her enough gas to first make her silly and then to put her to sleep. She was all for it. However, as Dr. Sykes rolled her away, tears formed in Mia’s eyes. I had to keep myself from shouting my thoughts: Wait! Are you sure about this, Mia? You don’t have to go in like this! Let’s rethink this goofy juice thing! I watched Mia’s face closely to catch the slightest glimpse of her wanting to change her mind. There was none. Even though she was scared, she pushed through, and Jase and I let her. We both followed the gurney with tears in our eyes, but she never saw them.

we will not win the battle for a stable climate by trying to beat the bean counters at their own game—arguing, for instance, that it is more cost-effective to invest in emission reduction now than disaster response later. We will win by asserting that such calculations are morally monstrous, since they imply that there is an acceptable price for allowing entire countries to disappear, for leaving untold millions to die on parched land,

Where most people have some reaction to the act of telhng a He, such as feehngs of guih or shame,

mods

When Torgon Greyiron returned at last to the Iron Islands, he declared the

**Verse 1:** When the storms roll in, and the skies turn black, I plant my feet, ain't no turning back. The winds may howl, the floods may rise, But I've got a fire that never dies. **Chorus:** Resilience, it's my middle name, Through the thunder and the rain. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll weather it all. **Verse 2:** Life's thrown curves, knocked me off my track, But like a boomerang, I always come back. Scars on my skin, stories they tell, Of a survivor's heart that knows no farewell. **Chorus:** Resilience, it's the song I sing, In the face of everything. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll outlast it all. **Bridge:** There's a strength that grows, with every fall, A voice that rises, above it all. I'm not just a number, I'm not just a name, I'm resilience, in this life's game. **Chorus:** Resilience, it's the path I choose, With every challenge, I refuse to lose. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll conquer it all. **Outro:** So let the records show, let the story be told, Of a spirit unbroken, a will untold. With resilience, I'm uncontainable, Unstoppable, and unbreakable. May this song inspire strength and determination in anyone facing adversity. Keep standing tall!

There’s only one way to find the right key holder, and that’s to put yourself in as many situations as you can, where you get to meet as many people as possible. Networking can be a numbers game. Sometimes you’re lucky and meet the right person at the right time within minutes. Sometimes it can take years. But you have to fully believe that the gatekeeper is out there somewhere, and it’s your job to find him or her.

JS: You started with a PC-98, but in 1996 it was on the way out, being replaced by Windows computers in Japan. Why start on PC-98? ZUN: The simple fact is that I didn’t think games would run on Windows. I honestly didn’t really consider Windows computers when I made the first Touhou games. Windows didn’t have things like DirectX back then.152 I just didn’t see it as a platform for game development. Certainly the games that I knew, and the games that I was interested in, had all been done on different systems. Some people owned a computer, like a PC-98 or an X68000, exclusively for games. So the concept of using Windows for games was one that I never really considered.

It's from unrequited love, where you will find the greatest lovers and best untold love stories in the world.

Play your little fucking games somewhere else,” Mills said angrily.

She is whom I name myself—but a name that feels too intimate in the mouths of strangers. You cannot tell, but always, always, my mind is in overdrive, analyzing intentions, playing a game of chess. “What’s your name?” I don’t know. I’m not really sure whom you’re expecting.

even beyond class issues, Jackson’s candidacy changed the nature of democratic politics. One political commentator noted that Jackson’s reign ushered in the “game of brag.

Jason Kessler: My job that season was to drive around town and drop people’s scripts off at their houses. I very specifically remember going to John’s apartment in West Hollywood and he was playing video games with a friend. He invited me in to play. Normally, I would drop a script off at the door or I’d knock on the door and hand it to him, and someone would say, “Oh, thank you very much,” and just go in their house. John’s the only person who ever invited me in.

I was raised as a servant myself amongst the halls and chambers and libraries, but I was given the gift of letters by Archmaester Walgrave. Thus did I come to know and love the Citadel and the knights of the mind who guarded its precious wisdom. I desired nothing more than to become one of them—to read of far places and long-dead men, to gaze at the stars and measure the passing of the seasons.