When you’re four, forever and ever can mean yesterday. - Ben Aaronovitch

He’d obviously wanted to tell someone about it for a long time and I was a convenient ear.
I get that a lot. Stephanopoulos calls it my secret weapon.
“It’s that vacant expression,” she said. “People just want to fill the empty void.”

This is a terrible work," I said. "Why did you do it?"
"The usual reasons," said the Magister. "I told myself it was piety and duty to the Church, but a thousand years of contemplation will batter down the doors of one's own delusions.

With a rich history like that there was nothing to be done except flatten it and replace it with a shopping arcade designed in the who-the-fuck-cares school of retail architecture. The result was a two-story warehouse with a flat roof designed to maximise floor space and nothing else.