“Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.”

“To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.”

“English is a curiously expressive language. Womb, room, tomb. It sums up living in three words.”

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

“And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek.”