Keith Roberts - Pavane (1968)

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The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones.

Keith Roberts
He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where's His justice, where's His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross.... She thought, I'll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they'll be better and anyway they can't be worse.

Keith Roberts
She said faintly, Are you... real?
Amusement showed in his face. Real? he said. Define reality and I can answer you. He waved a hand. Look into solid earth, into rock, and see the galaxies of all Creation. What you call reality melts; there is a whirling, a spinning of forces, a dance of motes and atoms. Some of them we call planets, one of them is Earth. Nothingness within nothingness enclosing nothing, that is reality. Tell me what you want, and I can answer.

Keith Roberts
It's a terrible thing, being afraid. It's like an illness; like wanting to fall down, and not being able to faint. You see you never get used to it. You live with it and live with it and every day it's worse; and one day it's the worst of all. I thought, when it... happened, I wouldn't be afraid. But I was wrong....

Keith Roberts
She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she'd just received the import of a crude lesson in economics.

Keith Roberts
The waves were indifferent, and the wind; and the rocks neither knew nor cared who owned them, Christ's Vicar or an English King.

Keith Roberts
Confession, he said, must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.

Keith Roberts
A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth.

Keith Roberts