William Peter Blatty

I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it is finally a matter of love; of accepting the possibility that God could love us.

William Peter Blatty (7 January 1928 – 12 January 2017) was an American writer and filmmaker. The Exorcist (1971) is his best-known novel; he also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation, for which he won an Academy Award, and wrote and directed the sequel The Exorcist III.

Quotes

• The original story that I sold [Morgan Creek] (and that I shot) ended with Kinderman blowing away Patient X. There was no exorcism. But it was a Mexican stand-off between me and the studio. I was entitled to one preview, then they could go and do what they wanted with the picture. They gave me a preview but it was the lowest end preview audience I have ever seen in my life. They dragged in zombies from Haiti to watch this film. It was unbelievable. But I decided, better I should do it than anyone else. I foolishly thought: I can do a good exorcism, I'll turn this pig's ear into a silk purse. So I did it
  • The Exorcist: Out of the Shadows (1999)

The Exorcist (1971)

I believe that we all have a foot in two worlds. The one that we're conscious of is in time, but now and then a freak like me gets a flash from the other foot, and that one, I think, is in eternity, where time does not exist and so the future and the past are both the present.

• Being a Catholic, I believe that we all have a foot in two worlds. The one that we’re conscious of is in time, but now and then a freak like me gets a flash from the other foot, and that one, I think, is in eternity, where time does not exist and so the future and the past are both the present. So now and again when I’m feeling a tingling in that other foot, I believe that I’m seeing the future.

• We have familiar experience of the order, the constancy, the perpetual renovation of the material world which surrounds us. Frail and transitory as is every part of it, restless and migratory as are its elements, still it abides. It is bound together by a law of permanence, and though it is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. Dissolution does but give birth to fresh modes of organization, and one death is the parent of a thousand lives. Each hour, as it comes, is but a testimony how fleeting, yet how secure, how certain, is the great whole. It is like an image on the waters, which is ever the same, though the waters ever flow. The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched. Spring passes into summer, and through summer and autumn into winter, only the more surely, by its own ultimate return, to triumph over that grave towards which it resolutely hastened from its first hour. We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to wither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops — which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.

• I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us … the observers … every person in this house. And I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity … to see ourselves as ultimately bestial … without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it perhaps … For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it is finally a matter of love; of accepting the possibility that God could love us. He knows … the demon knows where to strike … Long ago I despaired of ever loving my neighbor. Certain people … repelled me. How could I love them? I thought. It tormented me … How many husbands and wives must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds? Ah, dear God! There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very seldom in extraordinary interventions … such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I see it most often in the little things Damien: in the senseless petty spites; the misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Enough of these.

• And yet even from this — from evil — there will finally come good in some way; in some way that we may never understand or even see. … Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness … And perhaps even Satan — Satan, in spite of himself — somehow serves to work out the will of God.