“The entrant mooed like a calf but in insolence looked about him. Hew saw Kit. Kit saw him. Nay, it was more than pure seeing. It was Jove's bolt. It was, to borrow from the papists, the bell of the consecration. It was the revelation of the possibility nay the certainty of the probability or somewhat of the kind of the. It was the sharp knife of a sort of truth in the disguise of danger. Both went out together, and it was as if they were entering, rather than leaving, the corridor outside with its sour and burly servant languidly asweep with his broom, the major-domo in livery hovering, transformed to a sweet bower of assignation, though neither knew the other save in a covenant familiar through experience unrecorded and unrecordable whose terms were not of time and to which space was a child's puzzle.”

“Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved nor damned.”

“But poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such thing before, and he said: "What's on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?" I nudged him hard, saying: "Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There'll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.”

“and you were sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be,and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like you might be a cat.you got shook and shook till there was nothing left.you lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn’t care,and you waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow,then yellower and yellower all the time.then the lights started cracking like atomics and the boot or finger-nail or,as it might be,a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a big big big mesto,bigger than the whole world,and you were just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was all over.you came back to here and now whimpering sort of,with your rot all squaring up for a boohoohoo.now that’s very nice but very cowardly.you were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God.that sort of thing could sap all the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.”

“There she was, welcoming him in, farting prrrrrrp like ten thousand earthquakes, belching arrrp and og like a million volcanoes, while the whole universe roared with approving laughter. She swung tits like sagging moons at him, drew from black teeth an endless snake of bacon-rind, pelted him with balls of ear-wax and snuffled green snot in his direction. The thrones roared and the powers were helpless. Enderby was suffocated by smells: sulphuretted hydrogren, unwashed armpits, halitosis, faeces, standing urine, putrefying meat - all thrust into his mouth and nostrils in squelchy balls. 'Help,' he tried to call. 'Help help help.' He fell, crawled, crying, 'Help, help.' The black, which was solid laughter and filth, closed on him. He gave one last scream before yielding to it.”

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have 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.”