Quotes from William Peter Blatty

Gliding spiderlike, rapidly, close behind Sharon, her body arched backward in a bow with her head almost touching her feet, was Regan, her tongue flicking quickly in and out of her mouth while she hissed sibilantly like a serpent. Sharon stopped then screamed as she felt Regan's tongue snaking out at her ankle.

We have every indication that he died of fright.

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

But I'll tell you something, Father; you give me Regan's identical twin: same face, same voice, same smell, same everything down to the way she dots her i's, and still I'd know in a second that it wasn't really her! I'd know it! I'd know it in my gut and I'm telling you I know that thing upstairs is not my daughter! I know it! I know!

They said, "What sign can you give us to see, so that we may believe." —John 6:30–31 "You do not believe although you have seen." —John 6:36–37

Your mother's in here, Karras. Would you like to leave a message? I'll see that she gets it.

Never was he conscious that his thoughts were prayers; only that the prayers were never answered.

Jesus asked the man his name, and he answered, "Legion, for we are many." Mark 5:9

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.

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

Good luck with the world.

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?

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

The terror drifted over georgetown like the sun over a blind mans eyes

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

Regan's pulse was astonishing. It hammered at a speed too rapid to gauge. Across the bed, Merrin reached out calmly and with the end of his thumb traced the sign of the cross on Regan's vomit-covered chest. The words of his prayer were swallowed up in the poundings.

He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and "Hurrah for Karamazov" and kindness. He

The child was slender as a fleeting hope.

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

From these he had fled into love, but now 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.

Keep away. The sow is mine.

How many husbands and wives," Merrin uttered sadly, "must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds.

And yet even from this—from evil—there will finally come good in some way; in some way that we may never understand or even see." Merrin paused. "Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness," he brooded. "And perhaps even Satan—Satan, in spite of himself—somehow serves to work out the will of God.

You see,the trouble with the signs in the sky, my dear morsel, is that once having seen them, one has no excuse. Have you noticed how few miracles one hears about lately? Not our fault, Karras. Don't blame us. We try!