“What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification for what they did—or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?”

“Insofar as thought could be governed at all, it could only be commanded to follow what reason affirmed anyhow; command it otherwise and it would not obey.”

“You heard him say it? 'Pain's the only evil I know about.' You heard that?"The monk nodded solemnly."And that society is the only thing that determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?""Yes.""Dearest God, how did those two heresies get back into the world after all this time? Hell has limited imaginations down there. 'The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.”

“No matter where you go, no matter what you touch, there is cancer and syphilis. It is written in the sky; it flames and dances, like an evil portent. It has eaten into our souls and we are nothing but a dead thing like the moon.”

“Nihilists! I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.”

“When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.”

“There's an unsavory term for that- a guy forcing a girl to do sexual things. But what is it they say? You can't rape the willing. And I'd be willing. Oh, how I'd be willing.”