“Lancelot considered his cup.'He is inhuman,; he said at last. "But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?”

“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 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.”

“The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.”

“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.”

“If God is supposed to be merciful,' [Arthur] retorted, 'I don't see why He shouldn't allow people to stumble into heaven, just as well as climb there”

“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.”