Michael Moorcock

“Are you aware we anticipate the Apocalypse, von Bek?”

“The obsession’s common enough, Montsorbier, amongst ignorant folk.”

The English, I now know, eat mashed fish and deviled sheep’s hearts to guarantee a bad digestion (and consequent irritability). It is their abominable cooking which has given them half the world as their Empire.

You may be abandoned by Satan, Sir, and I abandoned by God, but that does not put us in the same cart, nor even upon the same road.

You’re as worthless as one of that decrepit mob. Lucifer has rejected you. Now mankind rejects you. Have the good taste, Sir, to accept a fact!

I must believe you doomed to eternal life, but also to eternal repetition! Your true doom is simple to me. You lack brains, Sir.

My bargain with God included the undertaking that I should play no direct part, merely supervise mankind’s self-redemption. Like yourself, my agents are those whose independence of thought is already well-established.

We’ll build a world where Order shall prevail. A few more deaths are inconsequential, surely, if they guarantee us eternal life and absolute fulfillment?

Better wicked Lucifer for a master, thought I, than a pious Tyrant!

I had learned, after all, to trust neither religion nor politics and to put my faith in the realities of metal, wood and steam, in practical engineering, whose rules could neither be changed nor made the subject of morality, so why should I show reverence for mere antiquity?

He had thought his wars over. Now he realized peace had been merely a lull.

Do you know what damnation can be, Sir? It can be a state of permanent caution, making one chronically unable to risk anything, even a risk which might save one from extinction.

Warlocks and witches debate to determine how to make their broomsticks fly again. But how shall they ever come together in strength? Even if your ideas had any truth, they’re so frequently, by their very character, at odds. Each claims to hold the key to the only wisdom. That’s where natural philosophers, who do not impose what they need to believe (or at least not so readily!) upon the world, but analyze what they see, have the strong advantage.