“…I was trying to obey the law. A law that was not monochrome and flat but complex, full of color and gradation and interlocking design. Law like a peacock’s tail that spread and spread and could repay endless attention. At the center of the fan, in the densest, most vivid place, were the Ten Commandments; then lighter and less crucial, the Six Commandments of the Church, related to the rules of worship. There were the Seven Deadly Sins; and then Farther out, the more remote, and opposite them, their reverse, the Virtures, Theological, Cardinal, Moral; and the Works of Mercy, Corporal and Spiritual.”
—Mary Gordon. The Shadow Man. (New York, NY: Random House, 1996), p. 8.
RSS