Most distracting of all, though, was not the threat of danger but the allure of beauty.

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them.

History indulges strange whims in the way it dresses its women.

But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God...is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach.

Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment.

Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul.

You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.