William Peter Blatty Quotes

Enjoy the top 86 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by William Peter Blatty.

“WHAT WE GIVE TO THE POOR IS WHAT WE TAKE WITH US WHEN WE DIE.”
— William Peter Blatty —

“Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness ... and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.”

— William Peter Blatty

We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops
which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.

— William Peter Blatty

The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us; but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. His attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful.

— William Peter Blatty

“Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us ... the observers ... every person in this house. And I think
I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.”

— William Peter Blatty

“As far as God goes, I _am_ a nonbeliever. Still am. But when it comes to a devil
well, that's something else.”

— William Peter Blatty

You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home ... Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism ...

— William Peter Blatty

“Would you like to hear a nice definition of jealousy? It's the feeling that you get when someone you absolutely detest is having a wonderful time without you.”

— William Peter Blatty

“We use concepts like "consciousness"
"mind"
"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.”

— William Peter Blatty

“This century hasn't got the lock on insanity.”

— William Peter Blatty

“Every man that ever lived craved perfect happiness, the detective poignantly reflected. But how can we have it when we know we're going to die? Each joy was clouded by the knowledge it would end. And so nature had implanted in us a desire for something unattainable? No. It couldn't be. It makes no sense. Every other striving implanted by nature had a corresponding object that wasn't a phantom. Why this exception? the detective reasoned. It was nature making hunger when there wasn't any food. We continue. We go on. Thus death proved life.”

— William Peter Blatty

“How many husbands and wives must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds!”

— William Peter Blatty

Henri Bergson thought the principal function of the brain was to filter out most of reality so that we could focus on the tasks of earthly life," he said. "When the filter is weakened by a powerful drug, what we see is not delusion but the truth.

— William Peter Blatty

“But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.”

— William Peter Blatty

“WHAT WE GIVE TO THE POOR IS WHAT WE TAKE WITH US WHEN WE DIE.”

— William Peter Blatty

“One death is the parent of a thousand lives”

— William Peter Blatty

“The love had grown cold, and in the night he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost and gently crying wind.”

— William Peter Blatty

“More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak? "Lord, give us a sign ... " The raising of Lazarus was dim in the distant past. No one now living had heard his laughter. And so why not a sign?”

— William Peter Blatty

The exorcist should not believe too readily that a person is possessed by an evil spirit; but he aught to ascertain by the signs by which a person possessed can be distinguished from one who is suffering from some illness; especially one of a psychological nature. Signs of possession may be the following: ability to speak with some facility in a strange language or to understand it when spoken by another; the facility of divulging future and hidden events; display of powers which are beyond the subject's age and natural condition; and various other conditions which, when taken together as a whole, build up the evidence.

— William Peter Blatty

“There it lies, I think, Damien ... possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here ... this girl ... this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves ... for ourselves.”

— William Peter Blatty

“Regan had the physical syndrome of possession. That much he knew. Of that he had no doubt. For in case after case, irrespective of geography or period of history, the symptoms of possession were substantially constant. Some Regan had not evidenced as yet: stigmata; the desire for repugnant foods; the insensitivity to pain; the frequent loud and irrepressible hiccuping. But the others she had manifest clearly: the involuntary motor excitement; foul breath; furred tongue; the wasting away of the frame; the distended stomach; the irritations of the skin and mucous membrane. And most significantly present were the basic symptoms of the hard core of cases which Oesterreich had characterized as genuine possession: the striking change in the voice and the features, plus the manifestation of a new personality.”

— William Peter Blatty

Adieu, sucky speed-reading critics and reviewers!"
Terry Dare, gothic author in Blatty's book "Elsewhere", just before he crosses over.

— William Peter Blatty

“I think the dead should shut up unless there's something to say”

— William Peter Blatty

“Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.”

— William Peter Blatty

She watched as a beer truck lumbered by with a clink of quivering warm, wet promises.

— William Peter Blatty

“At the edge of his dreams, there was often a sound like the faint, distant cry of someone in distress, and for minutes after waking, he would feel the anxiety of some duty unfulfilled.”

— William Peter Blatty

“Merrin began buttoning up the cassock. "Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon." The demon!”

— William Peter Blatty

“He started his engine and turned on the windshield wipers in time to see a tall old man stepping out of the cab. He paid the driver, then turned and stood motionless under a misty streetlamp's glow, staring up at a window of the house like a melancholy traveler frozen in time. As”

— William Peter Blatty

“He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. In”

— William Peter Blatty

For days or even weeks. It isn't rare to find destructive, even criminal behavior. There's such a big change, in fact, that two or three hundred years ago people with temporal lobe disorders were often considered to be possessed by

— William Peter Blatty

The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched.

— William Peter Blatty

“There, you see? I didn't curse. Don't you agree that I handled the situation demurely?”

— William Peter Blatty

“At last I realised that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion at all. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.”

— William Peter Blatty

“Mom, my bed was shaking.”

— William Peter Blatty

God was alien and cruel,

— William Peter Blatty

Didn't," Chris told him. "She was also sedated when last we spoke?" "Yes, she was." "I thought I saw her at her window that day." "Well, you're mistaken." "It could be. Perhaps so. I'm not sure." "Listen, why are you asking all this?" "Well, a clear

— William Peter Blatty

I'm not saying I'm against evolution. It's okay. Here's the story on reptiles, however. Think this over. They come up on

— William Peter Blatty

Yes, I think so. A sign of the zodiac. I think Gemini.

— William Peter Blatty

“This making you nauseous a little?”

— William Peter Blatty

“Out, Himmler! Out of my sight! Go and visit your club-footed daughter! Bring her sauerkraut! Sauerkraut and heroin, Thorndike! She will love it! She will-!”

— William Peter Blatty

“Why would an eye want to form?”

— William Peter Blatty

“All-good, like the vain, capricious, cruel God of Job? With all of eternity at His disposal, what fiendish new tortures might He not devise? A limited”