Johannes Cabal Quotes

They served to remind Cabal - should a reminder ever be necessary - why his social skills were so poor: people were loathsome and not worth the practise.

Cats, as any rational person knows, are solitary, opportunistic, ambush predators, much like spiders, but with fewer legs and a better fan club.

Well, if I ever suffer brain damage I know there's always a career waiting for me in local politics.

It's a philosophical minefield!" Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together.

Not entirely fair?" His voice became that of the inferno: a rushing, booming howl of icy evil that flew around the great cavern, as swift and cold as the Wendigo on skates. "I am Satan, also called Lucifer the Light Bearer..." Cabal winced. What was it about devils that they always had to give you their whole family history? "I was cast down from the presence of God himself into this dark, sulfurous pit and condemned to spend eternity here-" "Have you tried saying sorry?" interrupted Cabal. "No, I haven't! I was sent down for a sin of pride. It rather undermines my position if I say 'sorry'!

You've had your warning, Cabal. Now, prepare to face the terrible arcane wrath of Maleficarus!" Somewhere, a sheep bleated and quite ruined the effect.

You're familiar with the theory of evolution?" asked Cabal. "Sir?" "They're about to find out why intelligence is a survival trait.

Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who'd decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.

No churchmen, I notice. Of course not. What use have they for a world without irrational fear?

Horst…’ He lowered his voice, ashamed. ‘I’ve done things since then. Things you don’t know about.’ The confession almost choked him, but somehow he forced the words out. ‘I’ve done good things.

A census taker once tried to test me. I let my front garden eat him.

We’re supposed to be doing the devil’s work and you’ve gone and contaminated it all with the whiff of virtue. I really don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of being an agent of evil.

Johannes Cabal disliked many things, despised fewer, loathed fewer still, and reserved true hatred for only a handful. Understanding how intense his personal definition of 'dislike' was, however, gives some impression of how hot his hatreds ran. This is a man who had, after all, shot men dead for making him faintly peeved.

But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin.

For the first time, he truly understood what Nietzsche had meant when he had yammered about looking into abysses. Not only had the abyss looked into him, it had noted his name, address and shoe size.

There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and that they are just allowing everybody else to camp out on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige.

Zombies are so passe

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” “But guns make it so much easier.

He's painted himself into a corner and a thousand lazy reporters and ever-so-sincere politicians had rendered the only word that he could use comically melodramatic. 'I think ... Johannes Cabal ... is evil.

He smiled with all the warmth of a dollhouse oven.

The Mayor of Murslaugh was a jolly, ebullient man of the sort who, in a well-ordered world, would be called Fezziwig. That his name was Brown was a powerful indictment on the sorry state of things.

You know, I don't believe they noticed I had murdered them. I really don't. They just seemed faintly put out, as if it were a bit of bad luck, an act of God. 'Oh, my carotid artery has been severed with an open razor. I knew I should have cut down on greasy foods.' 'Botheration, I'm being belaboured with a fourteenth-century battleaxe. What are the odds, eh?

I had wanted some cheese, but couldn't find any at short notice. It was a shame. Cheese goes so well with tragedy.

Lo!" cried the demon. "I am here! What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose? Smite me no more with that dread rod!" He looked at Cabal. "Where's your dread rod?" "I left it at home," replied Cabal. "Didn't think I really needed it." "You can't summon me without a dread rod!" said Lucifuge, appalled. "You're here, aren't you?" "Well, yes, but under false pretences. You haven't got a goatskin or two vervain crowns or two candles of virgin wax made by a virgin girl and duly blessed. Have you got the stone called Ematille?" "I don't even know what Ematille is." Neither did the demon. He dropped the subject and moved on. "Four nails from the coffin of a dead child?" "Don't be fatuous." "Half a bottle of brandy?" "I don't drink brandy." "It's not for you." "I have a hip flask," said Cabal, and threw it to him. The demon caught it and took a dram. "Cheers," said Lucifuge, and threw it back. They regarded each other for a long moment. "This really is a shambles," the demon added finally. "What did you summon me for, anyway?

Instead he gave Cabal his most professional pat on the shoulder. It was his best pat, the one that said, You have my most sincere albeit non-specific sympathies. It was all he could do.

Now, let us consider the life of Johannes Cabal, if briefly. He is closing on his thirtieth year and is ageing better than most, although this is a product of a lifestyle where sunlight is shunned rather than the assiduous use of moisturiser. He stands a little over six feet tall. He is blond, blue eyed, and, perforce, pale. These are not unusual characteristics; those are coming.

Do you smoke, Herr Cabal?" "Only to be antisocial," replied Cabal, making no move.

The lesson seemed to be twofold: do not anger the gods, but if you must, at least make sure your city isn't next to a lake, as that's just asking for trouble.

Horst passed him a bottle he had picked up in his rapid trip from there to here. Remarkably, it's contents had survived the transit. "Drink this," he said, unmoved by Cabal's anger. "You need to save your voice for your next session." Cabal took the bottle testily and swigged from it. there was a moments pause, just long enough for Cabal's expression to change from testy to horrified revulsion. He spat the liquid violently onto the grass like a man who has got absent-minded with the concentrated nitric acid and a mouth pipette. He glared at Horst as he took off his spectacles and wiped his suddenly weeping eyes "Disinfectant? You give me disinfectant to drink?" Horst's surprise was replaced with mild amusement. "It's root beer, Johannes. Have you never had root beer?" Cabal looked suspiciously at him, then at the bottle "People drink this?" "Yes." "For non-medical reasons?" "That's right." Cabal shook his head in open disbelief. "They must be insane.

This was true, in a largely false way:

Cabal regarded her with mild amusement. “Smile when you whisper,” he advised her. “You’re supposed to be flirting with me, if you recall?” She stared at him icily. Then suddenly her expression thawed and she smiled winsomely, her eyes dewy with romantic love. “Oh, sweetheart… somebody tried to kill you? Whosoever would do such a thing to my nimpty-bimpty snookums?” Cabal could not have been more horrified if she’d pulled off her face to reveal a gaping chasm of eternal night from which glistening tentacles coiled and groped. That had already happened to him once in his life, and he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. “What?” he managed in a dry whisper. “Smile when you whisper,” she said, her expression fixed and blood-curdlingly coquettish. You’re supposed to be flirting with me, remember?” “Please don’t do that.

He found Satan on his throne in the cavern of lava, reading a large-print edition of Wheatley’s The Satanist. 'It’s a rum way to warn people off from worshiping me,' Satan commented, indicating the book. 'It seems to be lots of fun, according to this. Still, I bet they all die horribly at the end. Oh well. Who wants to live forever?

Everyone is so desensitised that the potency of artfully deployed italics has long been lost. It was good enough for H. P. Lovecraft, but apparently it isn’t good enough for the modern world, filled as it is with obtuse bastards.

Rufus Maleficarus has sorely disappointed me personally. I thought he was making quite a good recovery from what the previous director had unhelpfully referred to as "a soul-searing, sanity-dissolving, profoundly malevolent appetite for power and revenge." As it happens, I think the finger-painting lessons were going very well, at least up until Rufus used the paint to create a summoning circle, and then rode out of here on the back of an obliging Hound of Tindalos...

Your argument is as specious as it is fallacious. I do not give a damn that we have crossed a sea to be here. By your logic, if one was to circumnavigate the globe before being given the option of jumping off a cliff or not jumping off a cliff, you would fling yourself off immediately because - oh, my goodness - you've gone all that way and it would be a shame not to do something memorably stupid at the end. Not memorable to you, of course: you'd be dead. But everyone for miles around will always remember the day the idiot from afar threw himself to his death because, well, it would have been a shame not to.

Do shut your mouth--you'll catch flies sitting there like that.

Guns don't kill people. People kill people.' 'But guns make it so much easier. Shall we go?

His pièce de résistance was the-thing-I-shot-with-my-crossbow-au-vin, which was universally praised on the second evening.

It was about then that the effects of great wealth and a small gene pool started to spell their doom.

Horst was suddenly filled with great admiration for Miss Barrow, and a desire for popcorn.

So, onwards! To adventure, excitement, and oodles of delicious murder.

Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point.

Inside the mansion of his mind, he was putting snakes back into boxes.

This is Hell," he tried to explain for the third time. "Not a drop-in centre. You can't just turn up and say, 'Oh, I was just in the neighbourhood and thought I'd call by and have a bit of a chinwag with Lord Satan.' It simply isn't done." "No," said the infuriating mortal. "It hasn't been done. There is a difference. May I pass now?" "No, you may not. Satan's a very busy . . . um, is very busy right now. He can't go interrupting his work for every Tom, Dick, and Johannes"--he paused for effect, but the human just looked at him with a faint air of what seemed to be pity--"Harry, that is, who turns up demanding audience." "Really?" said Cabal. "I had no idea. I thought this would be an uncommon occurrence, unique even, but you seem to imply that it happens all the time. Fair enough.

Horst, I am not as single-minded—’ ‘Bloody-minded…’ ‘—as I was. On occasion I have been known to not do something despite it being logical, or done something despite it being somewhat irrational.’ ‘That is the most grudging description of a conscience I have ever heard.

Horst lurked in a corner, sitting upon a tea chest, and undermining any menace his vampiric presence might have brought to proceedings by reading an ancient copy of Comic Cuts that he had found somewhere.

You wish to isolate fear. Ah, well, if only I'd realised your ambitions were so simple. Perhaps we can work up to it by capturing faith, bottling hope, and presenting love to the world as a commodity, available by the pound, wrapped in greaseproof paper and topped with a bow.

Admittedly, given the Dreamland's tendency towards the dramatic, should any ship come to the island it would probably be full of cannibalistic pirates, piratical cannibals, Jehovah's witnesses or similar. That was acceptable, however. He was sure they could come to some arrangement that didn't involve any unpleasantness. Any unpleasantness to himself,at any rate.

Real history was unromantic, steeped in greed and blood and abject eye-rolling stupidity. An endless parade of putative Ozymandiases marching off to glory before snapping off at the ankles in the depths of the desert: that was human history. Every now and then there would be the pretence of civilisation, but soon enough the restless, hateful, atavistic hearts of humanity would tear down the towers and slide back into barbarism, squealing with glee. Decadence loves the taste of blood, even though it is poison.

... the first few minutes of a person's death are the most vitally important minutes of opportunity for a necromancer, [so] Cabal added, "Look, I have to go. Without the necessary chemicals, we'll lose whatever wits are still floating around his cooling brain. The only more immediate alternative that I can think of is a Tantric ritual involving necrophiliac sodomy and, frankly, I don't think my back is up to it. So, if you will excuse me?

Sighing heavily, for he disliked violence generally and murder in particular, Cabal set off to commit violent murder.

If I’m right…’ She was already walking quickly back towards the theatre. ‘If I’m right, science killed the magician.’ *

We’re having fun, and I’ve met some of your friends and your brother, all of whom seem absolutely delicious.

He’d asked for his to be cooked medium rare, which in Mirkarvian cuisine meant it had been shown a picture of an oven for a moment and then served. A very brief moment, mind.

Oh, wait. You’re threatening us?’ Her smile returned, a delightful expression filled with spring sunshine, heartfelt joy, and the imminence of wholesale slaughter.

The only more immediate alternative that I can think of is a Tantric ritual involving necrophiliac sodomy and, frankly, I don't think my back is up to it.

So she leapt without hesitation toward it trailing a silken thread behind her as they fell, she a model of concentration, he singing about sausages.

They do not mind being taken for a ride, as long as the ride is fun.

IN WHICH THERE ARE MONSTERS AND CATS, WHICH IS TO SAY, VERY MUCH THE SAME THING

All science is based on the precept that we know too little. Ignorance is not bliss. It is only ignorance. Its bed partner may be the inertia of the conservative. Often it is only fear.

You don't?' Horst was so astounded he almost leapt to his feet. His smile returned in full power. 'Then you have treat waiting for you! It's wonderful! I mean, I remember it as being wonderful. I do not eat cake. Not now. Being a vampire and everything. You did know I'm a vampire, didn't you?' He suddenly seemed to remember that they were doing introductions and held up his hand. 'Horst Cabal, vampire. Didn't especially want to be, but there you go. I miss Battenberg. Hello, everyone!

(D) Write a political treatise—not to exceed 250,000 words or 500 sides, whichever is less—detailing your solution to stabilising relations in the region. Military force above brigade level is not permitted, nor is divine intervention. You may include diagrams.

My God. Johannes, are you saying that you’re accepting this task because I asked you?’ Cabal did not reply. Instead he found a loose thread on the eiderdown and fiddled distractedly with it. Horst sat on the side of the bed, embraced his brother around the shoulders with one arm, and rubbed the top of his head with the knuckles of the other. ‘Horst!’ snapped Cabal. ‘I am no longer eight years old!’ Horst kissed him on the top of the head. ‘You’ll always be my little brother, Johannes, even if you look older than me now.

Apparently the Ministerium Tenebrae had decided to conquer the region using the unusual twin-pronged attack of zombies and avant-garde artwork.

The truth of it was that an eternity of very much anything becomes torture after a while.

It was like being threatened by wolves dressed as sheep, who had sunk so deep into their method acting that they were now unclear about the whole ‘being dangerous’ thing.

Cabal slapped him hard. Perhaps harder than necessary, but he felt he deserved a little recreation.

Cabal knew then that he was dealing with the kind of official with whom he always lost his temper. He lost his temper. ‘Don’t

In the last few months, he’d found himself prey to strange twinges that, after some research, he had discovered to be his conscience.

The spider-woman is purring.

He smiled, and it was like a bloodless cut. 'No,' he replied, amused by something. 'No, not a doctor. I haven't the bedside manner for it.

So - what's life like?" "Life? It's like a wisp of smoke in a tempest.

Even fear can be defeated by curiosity or, failing that, boredom

Marriage, it seemed, was truly an institution; in this case, something along the lines of a prison or an asylum.

There are ladies present, and I was raised to believe that being naked in front of strange ladies is something reserved for special occasions.

I dislike seats without backs. I’ll forget myself, lean back, and fall over, and where shall my dignity be then? I shall stand.

that which is supernatural and nasty knows supernatural and nastier when it sees it.

Rufus ignored him, muttering in the lost tongue of a pre-human civilisation that had worked great sorcerous happenings yet had never invented the vowel.

Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who’d decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.

May I ask what happened to your last revolver?’ ‘It turned into a sword.’ ‘Of course it did.’ ‘And then the ghouls probably stole it.’ Cabal smiled with an expression so close to fondness that it made Horst stare. ‘The naughty rapscallions.

Real history was unromantic, steeped in greed and blood and abject eye-rolling stupidity. An endless parade of putative Ozymandiases marching off to glory before snapping off at the ankles in the depths of the desert: that was human history.

Is the human creature as perfect in function as it might be?’ ‘Meaningless,’ replied Cabal, ‘with no definition as to what that function might conceivably be. We are good communicators, passable runners, middling swimmers, and poor at flying.

There was drinking. There was animalistic growling and squawking. There was vomiting. There were flows of excrement. Thus far, this was indistinguishable from most parliaments, but it was the refusal to get down to any real work that galled Satan.

Listen, you pathetic little man... you pathetic little dead man. You're making a fundamental error, I'm not dead. Tried it once, didn't like it. Right now-right this instant. as I look into your rheumy little gimlet corpse eyes-I am alive. I have come here at a great inconvenience

I thought you were talking figuratively! I kept asking and you kept saying, "An entrance to Hell," so I thought, Very well, Cabal, have your moment of melodrama now and bathos later when it turns out your talking about Ipswitch or somewhere, but you meant it. You actually meant it literally.

I wore this hat to Hell.’ He held the hat up to his nose and inhaled. ‘Still faintly redolent of brimstone. That smell gets everywhere.’ Horst, waiting by the door with the packed suitcase, said, ‘When a normal person uses a phrase like they wore a hat to Hell, one naturally assumes they just wore it a lot.

We can’t just go around resurrecting people, Johannes. It’s against nature.’ ‘Says the vampire. Truly, Horst, nature lets all sorts of awful things through on the nod. What I propose doesn’t constitute awful in the pejorative sense to my mind.’ ‘What gives us the right…?’ ‘I’m a necromancer. I claim the right.

There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and they are just allowing everybody else to camp on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige.

She's a bike. A tart. A slut. She'll be buried in a Y-shaped coffin. A baggage. A hussy. She's the good time that was had by all. A wanton floozy." She looked closely at him, but he still seemed to be stuck on cricket. "A nymphomaniac." The use of a technical term shook him from his paralysis. Realisation flooded his face and a silent "Oh!" filled his mouth.

Cabal looked at him. The expression “if looks could kill” does not begin to describe the pure corrosive abhorrence that he put into the glance. If, however, the steward had suddenly found himself transported far away and nailed, through his genitals, to the steeple of a church in the middle of a violent electrical storm, a more exact impression may be gained.

There had been no possibility that he had survived. His body had not tumbled into a foaming sea or into a clouded abyss from which he might later make an unexpected return through the good offices of kindly dolphins or giant eagles. Cabal had himself checked that all life was extinguished by searching for a pulse, looking for clouding on a mirror held to the corpse’s mouth, and by kicking repeatedly.

Leonie Barrow's voice was quiet but clear. With Marechal's eyes on her, she said, "Cabal is more dangerous then you can believe, Count. Both the angels and the devils fear him. He's a monster, but an evenhanded one. I know he is capable of the most appalling acts of evil." Her glance moved to Cabal, who was listening dispassionately. "I believe he is also capable of great good. But to predict which he will do next isn't easy or safe." Marechal grimaced. "What is your association with this man? Public relations or something?" "I loathe him," she said with sudden venom. The, more quietly, "And I admire him. You're right; he didn't have to come back. He's taken a big risk, but I know he's taken bigger. I can't tell you whether he's a monster or playing the hero right now, but I know one thing. You made the biggest mistake of your life when you made an enemy of him.

Lots of forms. Stacks of forms. An average of nine thousand, seven hundred, and forty-seven of them were required to gain entrance to Hell. The largest form ran to fifteen thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven questions. The shortest to just five, but five of such subtle phraseology, labyrinthine grammar, and malicious ambiguity that, released into the mortal world, they would certainly have formed the basis of a new religion or, at the least, a management course.

The sergeant was just noting that she was a very handsome woman, from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean he would guess, when his eyes unexpectedly burst into flames. This distressed him, and he staggered around, blood-red fire erupting from the sockets, while he explained the degree of agony he was enduring and how much he would appreciate assistance of an unspecified form from those present. Then his head caught fire and his conversation became very scream orientated.

Yours is the other sort of society, then. The type with impractical handshakes.

haruspicy,

Leonie Barrow looked at him with a strange expression, her pale skin blue and shadowed by the failing light, her eyes dark and bottomless. "Cabal..." she whispered. "Yes?" he replied. "How-"She paused, searching for the words. Her gaze fell, and then rose again, and she looked deep into his eyes. "How did you ever become so very fucked up?

Cabal smiled quietly at suchlike- a smile he had spent painstaking minutes in front of the mirror bringing to a high finish, a smile that said, "I will indulge your attentions for a few seconds, but then you should really look away", with a pitch perfect subtext, barely discernible at a conscious level, that went, "Or I shall run an open razor across your eyeball". Everybody looked away.

At our discretion,’ said Collingwood firmly. ‘We’re not charities, ma’am, we are businessmen. No donations. Only investments.’ To punctuate his point, he crossed his arms, adopted an adamant expression, and fell unconscious. The servant behind his chair caught him before he could fall forward.

According to his upbringing, there were certain subjects that it was ill-mannered to raise in conversation with a new acquaintance. With the likes of politics, religion, fatness, and house prices, it seemed reasonable to assume that "being dead" was likely to be somewhere on the list.