Who could trust language?
What if the drive to survive was a form of faith, a form of prayer?
You’re a mystery the way a sacrament is a mystery.
Is there any one of us who doesn’t want to strike back at all the evil in this world?
All my struggles, my triumphs, my losses, were being eclipsed by what was being revealed now. Had ever ennui and despair been banished by such revelations, such precious gifts of truth?
In the story of the prince and the frog, there’s always a frog. This story... it has no frog.
And there is another kind of strength in you. A daring, and a hunger, and aloneness. And that hunger and aloneness I know, and I kiss with the lips I do not have; I hold with the arms I do not have; I press to the heart in me that isn’t there to beat with warmth.
We all need love, don’t we, even the worst killers, the worst animals! We all need love.
Everyone today has a story; the world’s an archive.
The world of atheism was cracking apart for me, just as once the world of Catholic faith had cracked apart. I was losing my faith in the nonexistence of God.
I was a human being once,” said the younger ghost. “I was a blood drinker for centuries after that. And I am a ghost now. And my soul has been my soul in all three forms.
Those who desire power want to.
What makes you think anyone has a destiny? We do what we do and we die.
I’d known for a long time why I loved history. It was because the historians made it sound so coherent, so purposeful, so complete. They’d take an entire century and impose a meaning on it, a personality, a destiny – and this was, of course, a lie.
Because if the Romans, the Greeks, the Hebrew scholars, and the Christians all describe the same entities, and issue the same warnings and formulae for controlling them, then surely that is something not to be dismissed.
Worry stops your ears to the real music. Worry doesn’t let you fold your arms around the bones of those you love.
True evil in this world is done by those with no imagination.
I thought the curse of memory is this: Everything is ever present.
Lord God, to be born with no talent is bad enough, but to have a macabre and febrile imagination as well is a curse.
I think you’re like a man who loses an arm or a leg and keeps insisting that he can feel pain where the arm or leg used to be.