“…being an atheist required discipline very like that of being Catholic. One could never yield to the idea of a supernatural authority, no matter how often one might be tempted. To think that a personal God had made the world was to yield to a demonic and superstitious and destructive belief. ”

“And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.”

“In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?”

“I knelt and prayed, and the strongest truth came over me. Didn't matter if God in his heaven was a Catholic or a Protestant God, or the God of the Hindus. What mattered was something deeper and older and more powerful than any such image - it was a concept of goodness based upon the affirmation of life, the turning away from destruction, from the perverse, from man using and abusing man. It was the affirmation of the human and the natural.”

“Well, surely you know. Didn’t you rebel? Don’t you? Why, Leon said of you there is a core in you which no one touches.""Nonsense. I merely know and accept everything. There is no resistance.""But how can it be?""Beauty, you must learn it. You must accept and yield, and then you shall see everything is simple.""I would not be here with you if I yielded because of the Prince...""Yes, you could be here with me. I adore my Queen and I am here with you. I love you both. I yield to that entirely as well as everything else and even the knowledge I may be punished. And when I am punished, I shall dread it, and suffer it and understand it and accept it. Beauty, when you accept you will flower in the pain, you will flower in your suffering.”

“No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.”

“And this lesson about mortal peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing in pans all over, pouring water of pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortal will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on.”