I understood something about myself as well, even if I didn't have the will to examine it just then.

Once you glimpsed the truth about yourself, your understanding was complete and you could finally be at piece.

For the merest moment I couldn't breathe. Something inside me quivered, some oud string plucked by his words, and if I breathed it would stop.He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertiginous moment, made me want to be better than I was.

People stood at the edge, gaping foolishly, because they didn’t believe it. The chasm was too big to understand.

And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.