“Yes, hell exists. It is not a fairy tale. One indeed burns there. This hell is not at the end of life. It is here. At the beginning. Hell is what the infant must experience before he gets to us.”

“He knows nothing about how this will all end, except that it will surely end. He tries to imagine himself into a future, somewhere past this point, but he cannot. There is nothing to do but to keep on existing, in this exact time and place. This is what hell must be like. Waiting without knowing. Not hell, but purgatory. Worse than hell.”

“What is Hell? Hell is the cry of a starving infant. Hell is the begging for mercy then denied. Hell is the betrayals between man and wife. The lies between father and child. Hell is where the heart is.”

“The spirit of life relates to what has been described by the word “heaven”; the phenomenal world around us to what is described by the word “earth.” Heaven and earth are one. Only man, in his foolishness, endeavors to separate them. To the extent that he is successful in this it becomes hell in his own experience. Hell is simply the absence of the experience of heaven; it is the absence of the experience of life, in whatever degree. The experience of life as it really is, is heaven.”

“Oh, Lord!" This must be what it's like to make love in Hell," he whispered. "With a burning she-devil.”

“Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always tales us somewhere.”