It Is The Same In

It Infuriated Him To Think That There Were Still People In The State Who Believed In A Loving And Merciful God. There Are Mystics Who Are Said To Have Experienced God Directly. He Was A Mystic, Too, And What He Had Experienced Was Vacancy--a Complete Certainty In The Existence Of A Dying, Cooling World, Of Human Beings Who Had Evolved From Animals For No Purpose At All.

In The Taxi I Let My Hand Lie On Her Leg Like A Promise, But I Had No Intention Of Keeping My Promise.

But I'm A Bad Priest, You See. I Know--from Experience--how Much Beauty Satan Carried Down With Him When He Fell. Nobody Ever Said The Fallen Angels Were The Ugly Ones. Oh, No, They Were Just As Quick And Light And . . .

He Was Impregnably Armored By His Good Intentions And His Ignorance.

One's Life Is More Formed, I Sometimes Think, By Books Than By Human Beings: It Is Out Of Books One Learns About Love And Pain At Second Hand. Even If We Have The Happy Chance To Fall In Love, It Is Because We Have Been Conditioned By What We Have Read, And If I Had Never Known Love At All, Perhaps It Was Because My Father's Library Had Not Contained The Right Books.