Demon Quotes

“My purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to worship, to praise, to wait upon the word of El."

"That sounds really boring."

"Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one's created purpose.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“We longed for this world. We coveted it, and we hoped. Even Lucifer, though he wouldn't say it, looked on with greed-softened eyes, infatuated. I deluded myself into thinking that yes, perhaps Elohim had taken him back. Perhaps Elohim had forgotten all, would set him up as a god over this rich and wild new world. The next blessings to come from El would be his, and ours." He shook his head with a brittle laugh, the sound slightly too high-pitched for such a big man.

We had skirted the MIT campus to arrive on Main, a block from my office building.

"And why weren't they? Why couldn't they be?"

He pulled over, put the car in park, and turned to look at me.

"Because then he created them."

"Them?"

"You.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Yes, I call your beautiful world mutant and perverse. So would you if you had seen the original. If you had, you would know how far we've all veered, how like a cancer things have grown.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“I stared. "But you're saying--"

"Yes, Clay" - her mouth smoothed into a chilly smile - "Image of El, breath of God. In such an unworthy vessel. Something far more precious than diamonds, denied even to us but entrusted to a container of mud.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“I hesitated, having never considered that Katrina might be subject to the same whims of nature as other mortals. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry." And I meant it. Why do bad things happen to good people?

There are no good people.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Don't." I heard a tremor in her voice. "Don't do that. You did everything right."

"I don't think I did."

"Yes, you did. You're a good man."

I hated those words. I hated hearing them. Being a good man had won me nothing. Lucian's words echoed somewhere between my brain and the phone line.

I ask you, what is good, really, Clay?

And I knew the answer: not good enough.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Sweat trickled down my sides inside my sweater. "Why? Why did you do this?"

"Because this is your life, Clay: fleeting, ephemeral, and insignificant except for one thing, that El loved you. And you have missed it. Missed it all, completely. And now, look at you. Sweating, worried about your life, your story. Did you expect to live forever? Did you think this day would not come? It had to, if not in this way then in some other.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Suffice it to say, we were horrified by the entire concept of dying, even if we weren't the ones with the death sentence.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“His lips pulled back from his teeth. "This then, shall be my singular consolation, my bitter solace: that when you die - and the time will be soon - there will be at least one of El's precious clay humans more damned to hell than I!”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“It was raining the night he found me. Traffic had slowed on Massachusetts Avenue and the wan light of streetlamps reflected off the pavement. I hurried without an umbrella, distracted by the chirp of a text message, trying to shield the illuminated face of my phone from rain and the drizzle off storefront awnings. There had been a mistake in my schedule, an appointment I didn’t recognize and had stayed late at the office for just in case they showed. Our office manager was texting from home now to say she had no idea who it was with, that it must have belonged on Phil’s calendar, that she was sorry for the mistake and to have a good night.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon: A Memoir

“a girl in her twenties who might have been pretty had she refrained from drawing her eyebrows on with a marker.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Go away. Go live out your gnat's existence."

"But we're not done!"

Her eyes lolled back to me. "Yes, we are."

"But--I don't know how it ends!" And now I remembered something else. "Or what it has to do with me - you said this story was ultimately about me. What does this have to do with me?"

"What does this have to do with me?" she mimicked. "Can't you do anything but think of yourself? Go home."

"But how can I--"

"Go."

"I don't know--"

"GO!" She screamed it, lunging across the table at me.

I bolted up, stumbled back, knocking over my chair.

She screamed again. "GO!”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“El?" I spoke, softly, feeling foolish. And then, "Elohim?" The night answered with silence.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“So as I said, the world was mutating," she said, prick, prick, pricking at the cloth, looking up at me once to make sure, I assume, I was listening. "From the earth sprung hateful and ugly things that flourished amid all that was lush and good. There would be no more accord among the animals now; they would follow a different order, no longer subsisting exclusively on plants but also on one another. Adam's flesh was no longer the same, though it would take centuries for disease to manifest itself, for bodies so genetically pure that a man could marry his sister to corrupt down through generations to the point where a man dare not marry even his cousin.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Trust me, at the time nine hundred years seemed frighteningly short - it still does. I really don't know how you cope with your eighty-something life spans, and that's a best-case scenario, isn't it?”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“She shrugged. "He sat back, called it good, and rested."

I waited.

She waited.

I raised my brows. "And?"

Her mouth curved into a smile. "You think I'm pretty, don't you.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“The passing of every moment since has disconcerted me. See the clock on the dash?" He tapped it. "You're deaf to it, to the death of each second. But I am not.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon