A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

But I'm a bad priest, you see. I know--from experience--how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh, no, they were just as quick and light and . . .

Death was far more certain than God.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.

Failure too is a form of death.