Best 33 quotes of William Peter Blatty on MyQuotes

And the sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy. The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence.

But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.

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

Every man that ever lived craved perfect happiness, the detective poignantly reflected. But how can we have it when we know we’re going to die? Each joy was clouded by the knowledge it would end. And so nature had implanted in us a desire for something unattainable? No. It couldn’t be. It makes no sense. Every other striving implanted by nature had a corresponding object that wasn’t a phantom. Why this exception? the detective reasoned. It was nature making hunger when there wasn’t any food. We continue. We go on. Thus death proved life.

For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love.

From the cab stepped a tall old man. Black raincoat and hat and a battered valise. He paid the driver, then turned and stood motionless, staring at the house. The cab pulled away and rounded the corner of Thirty-sixty Street. Kinderman quickly pulled out to follow. As he turned the corner, he noticed that the tall old man hadn't moved but was standing under the streetlight glow, in mist, like a melancholy traveler frozen in time.

God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.

I didn't read The Haunting of Hill House until sometime early in the 1990's.

I get cassettes near Academy Award time of every movie that's made that thinks it has some kind of chance for a nomination - that's when I watch my movies

I have never read horror, nor do I consider The Exorcist to be such, but rather as a suspenseful supernatural detective story, or paranormal police procedural.

I lived in Georgetown in the late 70s about four houses down from the steps.

I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious.

In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on Earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the Ninth Configuration. But, given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would take for just one of these protein molecules to appear by chance? Roughly 10 to the 243rd power, billions of years; and I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in a god.

I tried to make every bit of it as creepy as I could. And I had the same response you do. I feel the same way. The hospital scenes, that procedure was so real.

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.

Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness... and perhaps even Satan - Satan, in spite of himself - somehow serves to work out the will of God.

Procrastination is what we often call 'resistance.

The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us; but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. His attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful.

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

We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops - which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.

We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.

When the filter is weakened by a powerful drug, what we see is not delusion but the truth.

Would you like to hear a nice definition of jealousy? It's the feeling that you get when someone you absolutely detest is having a wonderful time without you.

You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home... Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism.

But if all of the evil in the world makes you think that there might be a devil, Chris, how do you account for all the good?

Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter?

Her shoes were comfortable. They reflected her hope for the evening.

Something else," he told Atkins. He stood with his nose an inch away from the sergeant's, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his coat. "What does Lucifer mean?" "Light Bearer." "And what is the stuff of the universe?" "Energy." "What is energy's commonest form?" "Light." "I know." And with that, the detective walked away, listing slowly through the squad room and down the stairs. He didn't come back.

Something unspeakable left the room.

The child was slender as a fleeting hope.

The child was slender as fleeting hope.

The demon's target is not the possessed; it is us the observers..everyone in this house. I think the point is to make us despair..to reject our humanity: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.

To keep up with the times these days, it seems you have to be a little bit demented. — “William F. Kinderman”.