“Evil is inevitable,' Reuben quoted, 'in the course of a creation which develops with time.”

“Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.”

“At last he stood staring at the old Reuben Golding he thought he knew so well, and neither had a word for the other that mattered.”

“Tell me–how old are you, Reuben? I'm thirty-eight. How is that for total honesty? Do you know many women who volunteer they're thirty-eight?”

“You killed them, Reuben. You killed them in their sins! You terminated their destiny on this earth. You snatched from them any chance for repentance, for redemption. You took that from them. You took it all, Reuben. You snuffed out forever the years of reparation they might have lived! You took life itself from them and you took it from their descendants, and yes, even from their victims, you took what their amends might have been.”

“Aren't there gradations of evil? Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls with the first sin, plummeting to the depth?”

“An evil for these times destined to move through the world in handsome human guise.”