More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, so allow me to introduce myself: I’m the Devil.
like fingers spread to support a gossamer sky.
Some people might call it demonic possession, but to me, it’s just being considerate.
“Believed,” he says softly. “As opposed to knowing. There’s a difference.”
Seen as too ugly and too dumb to be worth exploiting. (I don’t think I’d want to be a human, somehow; you people never seem to have got the knack of looking out for each other.) She wasn’t worth anything to anybody, except me.
When you’re deep inside the mind of the sort of people we generally get called on to inhabit—let’s say I’ve been in some pretty grim places in my time, and nearly all of them have had bone walls. It’s noisy in there, what with all the sobbing and the yelling and the horrible vivid memories played back at maximum volume, over and over again.
Clerical work is as close as any of us can hope to get to death: oblivion, the untroubled dreamless sleep of the deskbound.
My problem is, I quite like being alive, in spite of everything.
Conflict is where two parties come together to sort out their differences through combat, with a view to reaching a definitive conclusion. It’s a voluntary act of cooperation designed to achieve a positive outcome.”
We aren’t, after all, barbarians. We respect the mortal human urge to examine, analyze, and scrutinize the universe, and to express the findings. Contrary to what some ill-informed people would have you believe, we’re passionately committed to freedom of speech. We don’t burn books. Only the people who write them.)
What was the first thing He did? Let there be light. And as soon as you have light, you have its inevitable opposite: the absence of light, the places where the sun don’t shine. Not being stupid, He knew precisely what the consequence would be, but He went ahead and did it anyway. He didn’t actually say, Let there be darkness, but it was very strongly implied, you bet.
“I shouldn’t be telling you any of this,” I add. “It’s so hush-hush it’s a wonder it doesn’t bend light. But there it is, and I’m caught up in it, and I don’t know what to do.”
I feel something wet and warm and sticky flowing over me. I’m mildly stunned to realize it’s compassion.
We fought the Lord, and the Lord won. That doesn’t mean we were wrong. Just weaker.
My heart breaks. I have no idea why. You think you know what pain feels like, and then you find out.
