“Even the devil has a devil of a time on Earth these days.”

“It doesn’t really matter if you are left behind the back, but what matters is your capacity to pull and push everyone by your way to get to the front.”

“I wake up and I see the face of the devil and I ask him, “What time is it?”And he says, How much time do you want?”

“In the Deep South, God is a cotton king,Trussed up in plantation whites and powdered over smooth with a little bit of talcum from Momma’s compact.He’s the Georgia dust that gets on everything, in everything,Caking the soles of bare feetsifting through cracks in church pews, and catching in your lover’s eyelashes.In the Deep South, the Devil is a beautiful boywho swears and cheats at billiards on Sunday.He is the one who reaches up your skirt,pulls out the prayers your were saving for somedayand lights them on fire with his tongue.He will sing hymns while feasting on your forfeit heart,call you blessed while peeling away dignity like stockings,then drag you out in front of the church to be stoned.In the Deep South, the Holy Spirit is an old womanwith hands brown and gnarled as the nuts she boilsand a voice soft and dark as the Appalachian sky.She is the swamp kingdom matriarch children are sent towhen sins need to be wished away like warts,the presence of whom straightens the spines of wayward soulsand coaxes a “Yes Ma’am” from the devil’s own.In the Deep South, Jesus is a mixed-race childwith drops of destiny mingled into his bloodand the names of the saints tattooed along his spine.He has his mother’s bearing, one that wears suffering nobly,and baleful eyes that speak of the sins of his forefathers.The word of God flutters from his mouth like butterflieswith bodies baptized in tears and wings dipped in steel.In the Deep South, angels drink too much.They sashay and guffaw and forget to return calls.They tell white lies and agonize over what to wear.In the Deep South, angels look very much like you and I,and they cling to each other with dustbowl desperationand replenish their failing reserves of grace with ritualin the hopes of remembering what they once were,what wonders they once were capable of performing”

“The devil himself can become beauty, so we are told, to corrupt mankind.”(Marco)”

“Our combat with the devil always should be with the consciousness that we have authority always should be with the consciousness that we have authority over him because he is a defeated foe – the Lord Jesus Christ defeated him for us.”

“The Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt.”

“Art according to art! Love according to love! This is taking the salt away from Heaven. Do you think Our Savior tries to make Himself talked about? He does not ask to be recopied. God cannot be deified without ridicule. He likes to be lived. Dead languages are dead. One must translate Him into all the living languages, and help Him to hide Himself to do good just as the Devil hides himself to do evil.”

“In every person, there is a doer and a devil. With every passing days, the doer dies and a devil has to rise.”

“Be there a picnic for the devil,an orgy for the satyr,and a wedding for the bride.”

“For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person. (on Margaret Thatcher)”

“Le speranze le hanno le persone, ma i destini li distribuisce il diavolo.”

“No matter how an individual views Satan, whether they believe that he is a real character or that he is just the product of literary scholars and imaginations, no one can deny that each one of us has an aspect of the devil within us. By studying the character and nature of Satan, we learn about ourselves; and the more we know about ourselves, the better we can fight our own personal demons—metaphorical or otherwise—in order to create a better tomorrow”

“My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan’s origins, ‘holiness’ is, metaphorically, frozen stiff in his veins: and at that a corrupted formula – i.e. legalism. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God’s permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the sharpest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.”