Quotes from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Not entirely fair?" His voice became that of the inferno: a rushing, booming howl of icy evil that flew around the great cavern, as swift and cold as the Wendigo on skates. "I am Satan, also called Lucifer the Light Bearer..."
Cabal winced. What was it about devils that they always had to give you their whole family history?
"I was cast down from the presence of God himself into this dark, sulfurous pit and condemned to spend eternity here-"
"Have you tried saying sorry?" interrupted Cabal.
"No, I haven't! I was sent down for a sin of pride. It rather undermines my position if I say 'sorry'!”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Lo!" cried the demon. "I am here! What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose? Smite me no more with that dread rod!" He looked at Cabal. "Where's your dread rod?"
"I left it at home," replied Cabal. "Didn't think I really needed it."
"You can't summon me without a dread rod!" said Lucifuge, appalled.
"You're here, aren't you?"
"Well, yes, but under false pretences. You haven't got a goatskin or two vervain crowns or two candles of virgin wax made by a virgin girl and duly blessed. Have you got the stone called Ematille?"
"I don't even know what Ematille is."
Neither did the demon. He dropped the subject and moved on. "Four nails from the coffin of a dead child?"
"Don't be fatuous."
"Half a bottle of brandy?"
"I don't drink brandy."
"It's not for you."
"I have a hip flask," said Cabal, and threw it to him. The demon caught it and took a dram.
"Cheers," said Lucifuge, and threw it back. They regarded each other for a long moment. "This really is a shambles," the demon added finally. "What did you summon me for, anyway?”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“It's a philosophical minefield!"

Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Well, if I ever suffer brain damage I know there's always a career waiting for me in local politics.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Horst passed him a bottle he had picked up in his rapid trip from there to here. Remarkably, it's contents had survived the transit. "Drink this," he said, unmoved by Cabal's anger. "You need to save your voice for your next session."
Cabal took the bottle testily and swigged from it. there was a moments pause, just long enough for Cabal's expression to change from testy to horrified revulsion. He spat the liquid violently onto the grass like a man who has got absent-minded with the concentrated nitric acid and a mouth pipette. He glared at Horst as he took off his spectacles and wiped his suddenly weeping eyes "Disinfectant? You give me disinfectant to drink?"
Horst's surprise was replaced with mild amusement. "It's root beer, Johannes. Have you never had root beer?"
Cabal looked suspiciously at him, then at the bottle "People drink this?"
"Yes."
"For non-medical reasons?"
"That's right."
Cabal shook his head in open disbelief. "They must be insane.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“You've had your warning, Cabal. Now, prepare to face the terrible arcane wrath of Maleficarus!" Somewhere, a sheep bleated and quite ruined the effect.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who'd decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“You know, I don't believe they noticed I had murdered them. I really don't. They just seemed faintly put out, as if it were a bit of bad luck, an act of God. 'Oh, my carotid artery has been severed with an open razor. I knew I should have cut down on greasy foods.' 'Botheration, I'm being belaboured with a fourteenth-century battleaxe. What are the odds, eh?”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“This is Hell," he tried to explain for the third time. "Not a drop-in centre. You can't just turn up and say, 'Oh, I was just in the neighbourhood and thought I'd call by and have a bit of a chinwag with Lord Satan.' It simply isn't done."
"No," said the infuriating mortal. "It hasn't been done. There is a difference. May I pass now?"
"No, you may not. Satan's a very busy . . . um, is very busy right now. He can't go interrupting his work for every Tom, Dick, and Johannes"--he paused for effect, but the human just looked at him with a faint air of what seemed to be pity--"Harry, that is, who turns up demanding audience."
"Really?" said Cabal. "I had no idea. I thought this would be an uncommon occurrence, unique even, but you seem to imply that it happens all the time. Fair enough.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“We’re supposed to be doing the devil’s work and you’ve gone and contaminated it all with the whiff of virtue. I really don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of being an agent of evil.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Rufus Maleficarus has sorely disappointed me personally. I thought he was making quite a good recovery from what the previous director had unhelpfully referred to as "a soul-searing, sanity-dissolving, profoundly malevolent appetite for power and revenge." As it happens, I think the finger-painting lessons were going very well, at least up until Rufus used the paint to create a summoning circle, and then rode out of here on the back of an obliging Hound of Tindalos...”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“The Mayor of Murslaugh was a jolly, ebullient man of the sort who, in a well-ordered world, would be called Fezziwig. That his name was Brown was a powerful indictment on the sorry state of things.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“He found Satan on his throne in the cavern of lava, reading a large-print edition of Wheatley’s The Satanist. 'It’s a rum way to warn people off from worshiping me,' Satan commented, indicating the book. 'It seems to be lots of fun, according to this. Still, I bet they all die horribly at the end. Oh well. Who wants to live forever?”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“He's painted himself into a corner and a thousand lazy reporters and ever-so-sincere politicians had rendered the only word that he could use comically melodramatic. 'I think ... Johannes Cabal ... is evil.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“He smiled with all the warmth of a dollhouse oven.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who’d decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Lots of forms. Stacks of forms. An average of nine thousand, seven hundred, and forty-seven of them were required to gain entrance to Hell. The largest form ran to fifteen thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven questions. The shortest to just five, but five of such subtle phraseology, labyrinthine grammar, and malicious ambiguity that, released into the mortal world, they would certainly have formed the basis of a new religion or, at the least, a management course.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“It was about then that the effects of great wealth and a small gene pool started to spell their doom.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Satan rose to his feet and stood massive and malevolent, his head almost lost in the reeking clouds. Behind him, the floor shivered and shattered as his generals, princes and barons rose behind him: Balberith, Beelzebub and Carreau; Melmoroth, Shakarl and Mr Runcible; Olivier, Leviathan and Yog-Sothoth who just happened to be there because he couldn’t help it.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Rufus ignored him, muttering in the lost tongue of a pre-human civilisation that had worked great sorcerous happenings yet had never invented the vowel.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“hat was then Now Johannes Cabal and Joey Granite stood before Billy Butler and said nothing. The smell of smoke said it all for them. Butler smiled nastily. “Oh. It’s—” As famous last words go, they lacked a certain something. “Uppercut, Joey,” said Cabal. Joey Granite delivered an uppercut of surpassing science and pugilistic artistry. It was a thing of beauty and kinetic poetry that might be long admired among people who enjoy watching other people beat the living daylights out of one another. It was also powerful enough to lift a small building off its foundations. Anything up to a branch library would have tottered and fallen. Billy Butler, despite a bit of a gut, simply wasn’t in the same league weight-wise. By some miracle, his head stayed on his body, but there was little doubt that the police would be making enquiries long before he hit the ground again. “Let us leave, Joey,” said Cabal as Butler vanished through the cloud base.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Cabal knew then that he was dealing with the kind of official with whom he always lost his temper. He lost his temper. ‘Don’t”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

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