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“People were so quick to point at all those inspiring stories of catharsis, completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the broken never beat their demons, that the drunkard’s son stayed with the bottle, the war widow never conquered her loneliness, and the defiled child never wiped that imagined black stain from their soul. Because in a world that worshipped the victorious, who the hell wanted to hear about the defeated?”
― Nicolas Lietzau, Dreams of the Dying

“My point is, all these discussions about good and evil, where do they ever lead? A man is dead, and three children were orphaned. No amount of moral judgment and labeling will change that. Instead, we should ask ourselves what factors led to this situation and then work on improving those. Cause and effect, that’s all that matters.”
― Nicolas Lietzau, Dreams of the Dying

“The myth of pure evil depicts innocent victims fighting against gratuitously wicked, sadistic enemies. The myth encourages people to believe that they are good and will remain good no matter what, even if they perpetrate severe harm on their opponents. Thus, the myth of pure evil confers a kind of moral immunity on people who believe in it. As we will soon see, belief in the myth is itself one recipe for evil, because it allows people to justify violent and oppressive actions. It allows evil to masquerade as good.”
― Roy F. Baumeister, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty

“I want him to see, you know?” Lissja said. She was staring into her drink, not moving a muscle. “Oonai. I want him to wake up and see the ruins of his life, see what he did to his wife and to Inqshi, and the city. I want him to walk down Fortune Road and see the corpses in the ditches, I want him to breathe the ashes of all the houses he burned down, I want him to look all those orphans in the eye and explain to them why his lust for power was more important than their parents’ lives.”
― Nicolas Lietzau, Dreams of the Dying