“Thackeray is careful not to present a protagonist who is malevolently evil from birth; to trace a figure like this is unrewarding certainly to novelist and reader alike.”

“Blifil's failure as a character in "Tom Jones" is ultimately due to the fact that he has absolutely no redeeming characteristics and once his base nature has been discovered by the reader there is nothing further to know about hi,”

“Look too on this poor planet of ours,Torn by the storms of mysterious powers,Evil contending with good from its birth,Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,—Ah! what infinities circle us here,Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere!”

“...I think one shouldn't pussyfoot, and just say that you write the stuff that you would like to read. So you write for yourself, no doubt about that. But I do have a sort of romantic idea of someone in their twenties, of a certain bent, and when they pick up a book by me, they think--as I have done on several occasions--'Ah, here is one for me. Here is a writer who I'll have to read all of, because they're speaking directly to me, and they're writing what I want to read.' And sometimes you're doing the signing queue and a reader comes past and you sign the book, and there's a little exchange of the eyes, where you think, 'Ah, that's one of them.' So there is that ideal reader. And it's someone who's discovering literature and homes in on you. I'm aware of such readers.”

“All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.”

“He traced a line in the dirt with his toe. ‘This is a battlefield. Has been since Cain killed Abel. And don’t let it get complicated. Gray it ain’t. It’s black and white. Good versus evil. You might as well choose sides right now.”

“To be evil at all, Satan needs good things he can abuse, things like intelligence, power and will. Those good things come from God.”