Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before… — Neil Gaiman
Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.
p. 26Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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"But you can't just leave it at that!" said Anathema, pushing forward. "Think of all things you could do! Good things!"
"Like what?" said Adam suspiciously.
"Well ... you could bring all the whales back, to start with."
He put his head on one side. "An' that'd stop people killing them, would it?"
She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes.
"An' if people do start killing 'em, what would you have me do about 'em?" said Adam. "No. I reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there'd be no stoppin' it. Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale."
"I don't see what's so t'riffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset 'cos they act like people," said Adam severely. "Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
Maybe it's all part of a great big ineffable plan. All of it. You, me, him, everything. Some great big test to see if what you've built all works properly, eh? You start thinking: it can't be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire. And don't bother to answer. If we could understand, we wouldn't be us. Because it's all — all — "
INEFFABLE, said the figure feeding the ducks.
