I noticed early that the brightest ones were often the most cold, and i didn't understand that for a long time. i thought intelligence was supposed to make you good, but it doesn't. it just makes you capable, and capable without something to kneel to is scarier than stupid ever was. the serpent was the cleverest animal in the garden, not the strongest, not the largest, the cleverest, and that is where the fall came from, not through ignorance, through the cold precision of a mind that could see through everything except its own hunger

Solomon had a thousand wives and still looked over the wall. this is the only thing you need to know about desire. a man who thinks he will find satisfaction by getting more of what he wants is a man who does not understand what want is. want is not a hole you fill, want is a muscle that grows stronger every time you use it. the men who knew this turned their eyes inward and built kingdoms out of the same force that would have destroyed them. the men who didn't know this built harems that became prisons and died inside them, surrounded by flesh and starving for something flesh was never going to give them.