But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.

The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maiden's?

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.

All good things were at one time bad things; every original sin has developed into an original virtue.