Gabriel

“Nevertheless, they boarded The Purdue Victory and sailed out of Boston harbor, provided for against all inclemencies but these they were leaving behind, and those disasters of such scope and fortuitous originality which Christian courts of law and insurance companies, humbly arguing ad hominem, define as acts of God.”
― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

“—Father says! ...her voice cut him through. —Lucifer was the archangel who refused to serve Our Lord. To sin is to falsify something in the Divine Order, and that is what Lucifer did. His name means Bringer of Light but he was not satisfied to bring the light of Our Lord to man, he tried to steal the power of Our Lord and to bring his own light to man. He tried to become original, she pronounced malignantly, shaping that word round the whole structure of damnation, repeating it, crumpling the drawing of the robin in her hand, —original, to steal Our Lord’s authority, to command his own destiny, to bear his own light! That is why Satan is the Fallen Angel, for he rebelled when he tried to emulate Our Lord Jesus. And he won his own domain, didn’t he. Didn’t he! And his own light is the light of the fires of Hell! Is that what you want? Is that what you want? Is that what you wanted?
There may have been, by now, many things that Wyatt wanted to do to Jesus: emulate was not one of them.”
― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

“Wyatt was, in fact, finding the Christian system suspect. Memory of his fourth birthday party still weighted in his mind. It had been planned cautiously by Aunt May, to the exact number of hats and favors and portions of cake. One guest, no friend to Wyatt (from a family “less fortunate than we are”), showed up with a staunchly party-bent brother. (Not only no friend: a week before he had challenged Wyatt through the fence behind the carriage barn with —Nyaa nyaa, suckinyerma’s ti-it-ty…) Wyatt was taken to a dark corner, where he later reckoned all Good works were conceived, and told that it was the Christian thing to surrender his portion. So he entered his fifth year hatless among crepe-paper festoons, silent amid snapping crackers, empty of Christian love for the uninvited who asked him why he wasn’t having any cake.”
― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

“I’d say go to hell, but I never want to see you again.”
― Mad Men, incorrectly attributed to Sylvia Plath