“Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.”

“God is love, the bishops tell.
Yes, I know, But love is hell.”

“No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.”

“When I tell him that Im falling in love
Why does he say
"Hush, hush, keep it down now.
Voices carry"?”

“Then, if you love him," he said quietly, "please, Tessa, don't tell him what I just told you. Don't tell him that I love you.”

“So I really don't care about anything he [God] has got to say, and if he came down from heaven right now, in a big pair of hobnail boots, waving the book of Judges in my face, I'd simply tell him what I tell every other evangelising prick I meet: "No thanks. I'm not interested in your phony salvation. I'd prefer damnation. Now piss off, I've got some sinning to do."”

“I believe in God, not because the Bible tells me that he is, but because my heart tells me so; and the same heart tells me we can only have His peace with us if we love Him and obey Him, and that we can only he happy when we each love our neighbour better than ourselves.”

“Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.”

“But the soul cannot have any virtue if God is not loved with all the heart; for from that love flows the fulness of all grace, and without it no grace can flow into the soul, nor can it abide in it.”

“For God's sake, sit down. You look like a Calvinist rector telling his flock about Hell.”