William Peter Blatty Quotes

Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter?
William Peter Blatty
But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.
William Peter Blatty
Good writing is rhythm.
William Peter Blatty
What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night
William Peter Blatty
Something unspeakable left the room.
William Peter Blatty
But if all of the evil in the world makes you think that there might be a devil, Chris, how do you account for all the good?
William Peter Blatty
Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.
William Peter Blatty
We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.
William Peter Blatty
Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.
William Peter Blatty
And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.
William Peter Blatty
As far as God goes, I _am_ a nonbeliever. Still am. But when it comes to a devil---well, that's something else.
William Peter Blatty
God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.
William Peter Blatty
Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness... and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.
William Peter Blatty
Her shoes were comfortable. They reflected her hope for the evening.
William Peter Blatty
The child was slender as fleeting hope.
William Peter Blatty
We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops---which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.
William Peter Blatty