Listen to me. Listen… I could bend you with my finger and my thumb; a mere reed you feel in my hands… But whatever I do with this cage, I cannot get at you, and it is your soul that I want. Why can’t you come of your own free will?

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.