But if the lords were glum, the common people in the streets were huzzaing and throwing caps in the air. It would have puffed me up if I had not looked in their faces. There I could read their mind easily enough. Neither I nor Glome was in their thoughts. Any fight was a free show for them; and a fight of a woman with a man better still because an oddity–as those who can’t tell one tune from another will crowd to hear the harp if a man plays it with his toes.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seem to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity
Thou, who wouldst give no other sign, deliver me
Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of my head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take me from all my trumpery lest I die.
~ The Apologists Evening Prayer

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pains. Suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.

He wants a child’s heart, but a grown up’s head.

He who converts his neighbour has performed the most practical Christian-political act of all.
~ in God in the Dock

I had known Redival’s tears ever since I could remember. They were not wholly feigned, nor much dearer than ditchwater…. It’s likely enough she meant less mischief than she had done (she never knew how much she meant) and was now, in her fashion, sorry; but a new brooch, much more a new lover, would have had her drying her eyes and laughing in no time.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

I want God, not my idea of God.

It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a woman is with child.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women.
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

“We’ve had scores of matches together. The gods never made anyone–man or woman–with a better natural gift for it. Oh, Lady, Lady, it’s a thousand pities they didn’t make you a man.” (He spoke it as kindly and heartily as could be; as if a man dashed a gallon of cold water in your broth and never doubted you’d like it all the better.)
~ Character in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

When I fail as a critic I may yet be useful as a specimen.

Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.
~ Character in  Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

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