The terror drifted over georgetown like the sun over a blind mans eyes

I have never read horror, nor do I consider The Exorcist to be such, but rather as a suspenseful supernatural detective story, or paranormal police procedural.

God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.

As far as God goes, I _am_ a nonbeliever. Still am. But when it comes to a devil---well, that's something else.

Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.

We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops - which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.