The followers must feel besieged.

When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.