“I know hardly anything about Galahad except that everybody dislikes him.""Dislikes him?""They complain about him being inhuman."Lancelot considered his cup."He is inhuman," he said at last. "But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?”
“Lancelot considered his cup.'He is inhuman,; he said at last. "But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?”
“Lancelot tried to have a Word. His Word was valuable to him not only because he was good, but also because he was bad. It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.”
“Guenever never cared for God. She was a good theologian, but that was all. The truth was that she was old and wise: she knew that Lancelot did care for God most passionately, that it was essential he should turn in that direction. So, for his sake, to make it easier for him, the great queen now renounced what she had fought for all her life, now set the example, and stood to her choice. She had stepped out of the picture.Lancelot guessed a good deal of this, and, when she refused to see him, he climbed the convent wall with Gallic, ageing gallantry. He waylaid her to expostulate, but she was adamant and brave. Something about Mordred seems to have broken her lust for life. They parted, never to meet on earth.”
“He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy. When Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the electric message went between their eyes before they spoke a word. It was as if Elaine and the whole Quest for the Grail had never been. So far as we can make it out, she had accepted her defeat. He must have seen in her eyes that she had given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself-to love God, and to do whatever he pleased-so long as he was only Lancelot. she was serene and sane again. she had renounced her possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did. They were young creatures-the same creatures whose eyes had met with the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so long ago. And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake.”
“He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo's, there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace.”
“He did not himself believe in the supernatural, but the thing happened, and he proposed to tell it as simply as possible. It was stupid of him to say that it shook his faith in mundane affairs, for it was just as mundane as anything else. Indeed the really frightening part about it was the horribly tangible atmosphere in which it took place. None of the outlines wavered in the least. The creature would have been less remarkable if it had been less natural. It seemed to overcome the usual laws without being immune to them. ("The Troll")”