“The rules are simple. Prepare in silence. Train in stillness. Strain as much as possible to become worthy of facing the impossible. Maybe you'll be unlucky, or lucky, enough to be chosen but the chances are you won't. It's much more likely someone else will be picked who is far simpler and purer than you, untrained, unprepared: the timeliest reminder of what matters most.

Intelligence, everything anyone would think of as intelligence, is entirely irrelevant. It's just a question of being empty enough to transmit the will of the gods.”