Monsignor Quixote

Perhaps we are all fictions, father, in the mind of God.

No wine can be regarded as unimportant, my friend, since the marriage at Cana.

Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.

The Mayor about the fable of the Prodigal Son: 'But he came home.' 'Yes, his courage failed him. He felt very alone on that pig farm. There was no branch of the Party to which he could look for help. Das Kapital had not yet been written, so he was unable to situate himself in the class struggle. Is it any wonder that he wavered for a time, poor boy?

The Lord is my shepherd." But if we are sheep why in heaven's name should we trust our shepherd? He's going to guard us from the wolves all right, oh yes, but only so that he can sell us later to the butcher.

The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself.

A first reading is something special, like first love.

As long as there is a Church, there will be little Torquemadas

You can mock me as much as you like, Sancho. What makes me sad is when you mock my books, for they mean much more to me than myself.

Why is it that the hate of man – even of a man like Franco – dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence – for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?

Do you know that St Matthew mentions Hell fifteen times in fifty-two pages of my bible and St John not once?

Do you think it would be bad for me to have another glass?" "Vodka has never done anyone any harm.

When I am alone I read – I hide myself in my books. In them I can find the faith of better men than myself,

There are small bits of useless knowledge which stick to one’s brain like barnacles to

Men will always have to choose a lesser evil and the lesser evil may mean the state, the prison camp, yes, if you like to say it, the psychiatric hospital.

Father Quixote thought: How many times I have felt guilty as he does without knowing why. Sometimes he envied the certitude of those who were able to lay down clear rules--Father Heribert Jone, his bishop, even the Pope. Himself, he lived in a mist, unable to see a path, stumbling.