She curled her lip. She had discovered cynicism. - Keith Roberts

He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where’s His justice, where’s His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross....She thought, I’ll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they’ll be better and anyway they can’t be worse.

A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth.

The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones.