I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

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 . . .

At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing besides a glass of Guinness on a sunny day.

The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.