Mark Cain > Quotes

“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”
― Mark Cain

“You humans, though, have a choice. You can be good. You can be bad. When you are good, you can accomplish sublime things. Feed a starving child. Risk your life to rescue another. Let someone else have the last slice of cheesecake. But when you’re bad, there’s no limit to your atrocities. You commit genocide, develop a weapon that can kill a hundred thousand in the blink of an eye,”
― Mark Cain, Beelzebub: A Memoir

“I grabbed his arm. “Wait. Why are you helping me?” Melvil looked at me as if I were some alien being. “I’m a librarian. We help people.” “Even after you’re dead?” He shrugged. “You never stop being a librarian.”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“A million people are simply a million social isolates, each one imprisoned within his or her own brain pan, in which a very private Hell plays out.”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“Satan had established the professions of law and management consulting. Both were wonderful examples of pure evil, but a contract for a human soul was tedious and boring.”
― Mark Cain, Hurt of Darkness, or Lighten Up!

“As Adversary, Satan’s job is to tempt humans away from the path of righteousness. But in order to be tempted from the path, they must be on it to begin with.”
― Mark Cain, Beelzebub: A Memoir

“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “God.” “God who?” “Your god.” There was a pause. “Oh. My god.” “That’s right.”
― Mark Cain, Beelzebub: A Memoir

“FUBARed - that means fucked up beyond all recognition … you really should get out more or spend a little time on a military base -”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“Belief is powerful. It can create something out of nothing. Belief is one of the special qualities of humanity, like free will, opposable thumbs and backaches. Belief is a spark of the divine in you. Pretty special.”
― Mark Cain, Beelzebub: A Memoir

“Those who do not know themselves may be impelled by just those subconscious drivers you are describing, yet it is the goal of therapy to free the patient from this unconscious control. If we can’t change, what would be the point of therapy in the first place?”
― Mark Cain, The Reluctant Demon

“an attractive cover might entice someone to open the book and see what’s inside.”
― Mark Cain, Saint Peter Takes a Holiday, or It’s About Time

“Belief is a spark of the divine in you.”
― Mark Cain, Beelzebub: A Memoir

“the moral atheist or secular humanist?”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“His craft was in dry dock, lifted out of the river by two winches (as opposed to two wenches, which might have worked, too, but only if the girls had been really strong).”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“When all else fails, use duct tape.”
― Mark Cain, A Cold Day In Hell

“Funeral March of a Marionette.”
― Mark Cain, Bringing Up Baby in Hell, or What's the Matter?

“but then I’m a guy. We are simple creatures, driven mainly by lust and bacon. Having”
― Mark Cain, A Cold Day In Hell

“Humans aren’t ants; we aren’t bees. There is no communal intelligence. We talk but we don’t really hear each other. We are not a community, no matter how we pretend otherwise. A million people are simply a million social isolates, each one imprisoned within his or her own brain pan, in which a very private Hell plays out.”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“Small Devil Syndrome. It’s like Small Man Syndrome, but with horns.” Orson chuckled. “And a tail.” “Yeah, that too. Oh, and a really dinky, uh, pitchfork.” We started laughing, but a dirty look from a demon doctor shut us up. Still,”
― Mark Cain, Deal With The Devil

“What’s that a picture of? A cow eating grass. Where’s the grass? The cow ate it all. Where’s the cow? Why should he hang around if all the grass has been eaten?” You know: white art. White stuff.”
― Mark Cain, I'm No Angel

“Except for Socrates. Well, he left you with plenty to think about, but he was so irritating I could hardly stand him. What with his constant asking of questions, you’d think he was a failed psychologist. The dialectical method: bah. You can have it.”
― Mark Cain, A Cold Day In Hell

“I’m a guy. We are simple creatures, driven mainly by lust and bacon.”
― Mark Cain, Deal With The Devil

“when we don’t get enough pleasure, or at least when mortals don’t get enough pleasure, Eros is out of balance with Thanatos. Our lives, how you put it, oh yes, our lives suck, we get depressed, the drive toward death becomes an extremely powerful inner force. Some of us even kill ourselves. But when we have a full, libidinous life, the death drive is diverted,”
― Mark Cain, The Reluctant Demon

“We’d worked out this system a long time ago. There was just no way two people could fix everything that broke in Hell. Hell, things always broke in Hell. The best we could manage was to do the most critical things - and the things we felt like doing, like fixing our own door - and disregard the rest. If we missed something important, we’d hear about it quickly enough, either through a duplicate order or a scream over the PA system.”
― Mark Cain, Hell's Super

“The death drive, which some people have called Thanatos, for branding reasons I think, is an urge we have to return to our earliest state, an inorganic state.”
― Mark Cain, The Reluctant Demon

“lived my life during a period when we humans, especially those from the States, could never be completely genuine. We had to be too smart by half and never say anything with total sincerity.”
― Mark Cain, Deal With The Devil

“In life, he would occasionally darn socks, though his approach to the task was to stare at the hole-y garment, yell “Darn!” then toss the offending sock in the trash can.”
― Mark Cain, The League of Unusual Denizens

“That’s because it was sappy and trite. True, loving relationships are full of heart-felt apologies. Humans and, I suppose, even demons, make lots of mistakes, though humans probably make more because they have free will, so can muck things up more than the rest of the creatures in the universe. Heart-felt apologies,” I repeated. “Just like now, when I tell you I’m sorry to have doubted you.” I kissed her on the cheek again.”
― Mark Cain, The Reluctant Demon

“And then I knew him for the consummately evil creature that he was. He sounded just like a lawyer.”
― Mark Cain, Deal With The Devil

“cool word “simulacrum,” and I wanted to see if I could work it into a sentence –”
― Mark Cain, The Reluctant Demon