“kindling all over with pleasure at the thought of the past.”

“That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.”

“I hit walls of past pleasure all the time, and for me past pleasure is much harder to process then past pain...for me the traumas of the past are mercifully far away. The pleasures of the past however, are tough...the worst of depression lies in a present moment that cannot escape the past it idolizes or deplores.”

“Pleasure is seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”

“That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins. And some of them are mine. Mine, Adam's, Herod's, Judas', Hannegan's, mine. Everybody's. Always culminates in the colossus of the State, somehow, drawing about itself the mantle of godhood, being struck down by the wrath of Heaven.”

“But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over.”