Quotations

“There had been times, over the past millennium, when he’d felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look, we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there’s nothing we can do to them that they don’t do to themselves and they do things we’ve never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination. And electricity, of course… And just when you’d think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.” (26-27)

“It would be nice to think that the Satanist Nuns had the surplus baby- Baby B- discreetly adopted. That he grew to be a normal, happy, laughing child, active and exuberant, and after that, grew further to become a normal, fairly contented adult.

And perhaps that’s what happened.

Let your mind dwell on his junior school prize for spelling; his unremarkable though quite pleasant time at university; his job in the payroll department of the Tadfield and Norton Building Society; his lovely wife. Possibly you would like to imagine some children, and a hobby- restoring vintage motorcycles, perhaps, or breeding tropical fish.

You don’t want to know what could have happened to Baby B.

We like your version better, anyway.

He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish.” (28-29)

“The point is,” said Crowley, “the point is. The point is.” He tried to focus on Aziraphale.

“The point is,” he said, and tried to think of a point.

“The point I’m trying to make,” he said, brightening, “is the dolphins. That’s my point.” (40)

“I was going to ask you the same thing—watch out for that pedestrian!”

“It’s on the street, it knows the risks it’s taking!” (72)

“Good old International Codes. They’d been devised eighty years before, but the men in those days had really thought hard about the kind of perils that might possibly be encountered on the deep.

He picked up his pen and wrote down: “XXXV QVVX.”

Translated, it meant: “Have found Lost Continent of Atlantis. High Priest just own quoits contest.” (150)

“Car all right?” he said.

“Apparently. A little voice inside it keeps repeating ‘Prease to frasten sleat-bert.’” (189)

“The ends justify the means, though Aziraphale. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.*

*This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice-skating down it.” (272)

“Sometimes human beings are very much like bees. Bees are fiercely protective of their hive, provided you are outside it. Once you’re in, the workers sort of assume that it must have been cleared by management and take no notice; various freeloading insects have evolved a mellifluous existence because of this very fact. Humans act the same way.” (311)

“Only Death hadn’t changed. Some things don’t.” (321)

“It izz written!” bellowed Beezlebub.

“But it might be written differently somewhere else,” said Crowley. “Where you can’t read it.”

“In bigger letters,” said Aziraphale.

“Underlined,” Crowley added.

“Twice,” suggested Aziraphale.” (335)

“Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they’ve got a dead whale.” (337)

“Parental retribution was now a certainty, thought Adam, as he bolted, his dog by his side, his pockets stuffed with stolen fruit.

It always was. But that wouldn’t be till this evening.

And this evening was a long way off.

He threw the apple core back in the general direction of his pursuer, and reached into his pocket for another.

He couldn’t see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn’t. And there was never an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.” (366)