Monsignor Quixote

‘We have conquered the windmills,’ the Mayor said. ‘What windmills?’ ‘The Guardia revolve with every wind. They were there with the Generalissimo. They are there now. If my party came to power they would still be there, turning with the wind from the East.’

They finished a bottle quickly and Sancho opened another. ‘Is that wise?’ Father Quixote asked. ‘Wisdom is not absolute,’ Sancho said. ‘Wisdom is relative to a given situation. Wisdom too varies with the individual case. For me it is wise to drink another half bottle in a situation like ours when we have no food. For you of course it may well be fo

It’s odd, he thought, as he steered Rocinante with undue caution round a curve, how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself.

‘But to become a Trappist?’ ‘I think, you know, professor, that when one has to jump, it’s so much safer to jump into deep water.’ ‘And you don’t regret …?’ ‘Professor, there are always plenty of things to regret. Regrets are part of life. One can’t escape regrets even in a twelfth-century monastery. Can you escape from them in the University of No

After they had crossed into Galicia they halted at a village so that the Mayor could inquire where there was a vineyard at which they could buy good wine, for they were down to the last bottles of manchegan, and the Mayor distrusted all wine with labels.

The man said, ‘But please – my absolution.’ Father Quixote unwillingly muttered the unnecessary formula. The man put the handle back in the briefcase, closed it, and made a kind of duck in the direction of Father Quixote before he went out. Father Quixote sat on the lavatory seat with a sense of exhaustion and inadequacy. He thought: I didn’t say t

Father Quixote replied to the image which he watched in the glass. If he was to be shot he preferred the back of the neck to the face, for the face in its way is the mirror image of God.

Sancho gave the order for two portions of sucking-pig and a bottle of the Marqués de Murrieta’s red wine. ‘I’m surprised that you favour the aristocracy,’ Father Quixote remarked. ‘They can be temporarily accepted for the good of the Party, like a priest.’ ‘Even a priest?’

ridiculous books of chivalry