Christopher Fry

“We are all of us lost. The best we can do is make whatever we're lost in as much like home as we can.”

“... we have given you a world as contradictory as a female, as cabbalistic as a male, a conscienceless hermaphrodite who plays heaven off against hell, hell off against heaven, revolving in the ballroom of the skies glittering with conflict as diamonds: we have wasted paradox and mystery on you when all you ask us for is cause and effect!A copy of your birth-certificate was all you needed to make you at peace with Creation. How uneconomical the whole thing's been.”

“I am very much in love with something;What it may be I can't remember;It will come to me.That was a roundabout drive in the snow,Owing to my erratic sense of direction!”

“Your life, sir, is propelledBy a dream of the fear of having nightmares; your loveIs the fear of being alone; your world's historyThe fear of a possible leap by a possible antagonistOut of a possible shadow, or a not-improbableSkeleton out of your dead-certain cupboard.”

“I seem to wish to have some importanceIn the play of time. If not,Then sad was my mother's pain, my breath, my bones,My web of nerves, my wondering brain,to be shaped and quickened with such anticipationOnly to feed the swamp of space.What is deep, as love is deep, I'll haveDeeply. What is good, as love is good,I'll have well. Then if time and spaceHave any purpose, I shall belong to it.If not, if all is a pretty fictionTo distract the cherubim and seraphimWho so continually do cry, the leastI can do is to fill the curled shell of the worldWith human deep-sea sound, and hold it toThe ear of God, until he has appetiteTo taste our salt sorrow on his lips.And so you see it might be better to die.Though, on the other hand, I admit it mightBe immensely foolish.”

“What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.”

“One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria.”

“I've never seen a worldSo festering with damnation. I have leftRings of beer on every alehouse tableFrom the salt sea-coast across half a dozen counties,But each time I thought I was on the wayTo a faintly festive hiccupThe sight of the damned world sobered me up again.”