Quotes & Sayings About Exorcism

I was just reviewed by Robert Gottlieb, who was my editor at The New Yorker, and he sort of wondered at the fact that I still need to exorcise my parents at my age. I think he makes a basic mistake in thinking that exorcism can ever be total. The exorcism of your parents will still be occurring on your own deathbed. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive. — Rin Chupeco

Father Wanderly, have you seen a demon or evil spirit actually leave the body? What did it look like? Could you see anything? Did you see a wisp, like smoke over a campfire? Does the demon get sucked into a void, clutching on to the old, possessed body like a life raft? Or does it go quietly, like a child leaving her parents' home for the final time? If you couldn't see anything, if the spirit was invisible, then how could you know if the exorcism really, truly worked? — Paul Tremblay

There's a therapeutic aspect to all making, but the nature of working is to compress, condense, and shape stuff, not to just expunge it. It's not just an exorcism. — Art Spiegelman

Only after you've done the exorcism, then
you'll understand that ghost's also a species. — Toba Beta

I began with small roles in successful movies like 'No Country For Old Men' by the Coen brothers; but it was 'The Last Exorcism' that changed my life: with what I earned, I left Texas and moved to Los Angeles. — Caleb Landry Jones

See The Last Exorcism. But don't see its dumbass ending. — Paul Tremblay

This resentment you feel toward Father Henrique is another example," Holtzman said. "What did the man ever do to you? Nothing. So he botched that exorcism. It was his first one. He was young. Do you know what I did at my first exorcism?"
"Ran," Alaric said at the same time as his boss.
"Thats exactly right," Holtzman went on. "Its extremely frightening to look into the face of evil for the first time."
"Not," Alaric said, "as frightening as looking into the face of a man who has willing taken a vow of chastity. — Meg Cabot

An exorcism is tantamount to a miracle - an extraordinary intervention of God. — Gabriele Nanni

In exorcism, a verbal argument can never do anything. You can't ever beat the entity in a verbal argument because that's what he wants. It's only through a confront, a non-verbal confront, that anything happens. It has to be non-verbal. — William S. Burroughs

This book, for me, is less an exercise in recall than exorcism. — Jerry Stahl

I've always wanted to be involved in an exorcism movie. But I thought, "How do you make something scarier than The Exorcist?" The answer is you don't. But that doesn't mean you can't make something that is original and interesting. — Eli Roth

Just in case, though, I stormed into my apartment, tossed a quick hello to Mr. Wong, then rummaged through my entertainment center to lay out all my exorcism equipment. I kept it in my entertainment center because exorcisms were nothing if not entertaining. — Darynda Jones

Everyone knows that even the best exorcism has to be renewed once in a while. — Tahir Shah

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally ... to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life. — Anthony Venn-Brown

Oh, God, if that's where this woman had gotten her Sophie Mercer gossip, I was surprised she'd greeted me with a handshake instead of an exorcism. — Rachel Hawkins

Danced healing rituals (in African village compounds, temple courtyards, dance-therapy studios, public theaters, and other social settings) reinvoke old traumas for exorcism and the transformation of fear, convince people that evil is gone or possible to dissipate, and reaffirm communal solidarity and a sense of well-being. — Judith Lynne Hanna

That's what the shaman said. He didn't know what he was up against. He didn't expect the strength and weight and evil intensity of this spirit, this "entity," as he called it. The same way the priest in an exorcism has to take on the spirit. — Allen Ginsberg

Exorcism is a subject that interests me, and books on shamanism, I've read through. — William S. Burroughs

Horror immobolizes us because it is made of contradictory feelings: fear and seduction, repulsion and attraction. Horror is a fascination ... Horror is immobility, the great yawn of empty space, the womb and the hole in the earth, the universal Mother and the great garbage heap ... With horror we cannot have recourse to flight or combat, there remains only Adoration or Exorcism. — Octavio Paz

They were proclaiming the end of the world, redemption through penitence, the visions of the seventh day, the advent of the angel, cosmic collisions, the death of the sun, the tribal spirit, the sap of the mandrake, tiger ointment, the virtue of the sign, the discipline of the wind, the perfume of the moon, the revindication of darkness, the power of exorcism, the sign of the heel, the crucifixion of the rose, the purity of the lymph, the blood of the black cat, the sleep of the shadow, the rising of the seas, the logic of anthropophagy, painless castration, divine tattoos, voluntary blindness, convex thoughts, or concave, or horizontal or vertical, or sloping, or concentrated, or dispersed, or fleetin, the weakening of the vocal cords, the death of the word. Here, nobody is speaking of organisation. — Jose Saramago

Given his personality, I'd say exorcism makes perfect sense as a favored pastime. — Nicki Elson

The pure rapture was apparent, although there were glimmers of what could only be described as an exorcism. He was simultaneously reaching for something yet trying to rid himself of it at the same time as he ran through a smooth and fast legato. — Jessica Topper

The fact is that a "minor exorcism" takes place in every Baptism and Confirmation ceremony when we renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises. This prayer service will be along those lines. I'm not saying that anyone involved in the redefinition of marriage is possessed by the devil, which, if that were the case, would require the remedy of a "Major Exorcism," but all of us are certainly subject to the devil's evil influences and in need of protection and deliverance from evil. — Thomas J. Paprocki

Quitting a job can be like an exorcism where you cast out a demon. The demon is the foreign spirit who occupies you through your occupation. — Bryant McGill

We are not, not now, not ever, talking about sex," A.J. said flatly.
I had to laugh. "We're both grown men," I pointed out. "I don't see what the big deal - "
"Do it," he said, "and I will walk over to the church, wake up the priest, and demand that he perform an exorcism. On the spot."
"Well, now, that won't work," I scoffed. "I'm not a demon. Not even close."
"Yeah, well, I'm willing to try it," he said. "So go on. Make my day. — Suzanne Brockmann

Gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother — Germaine Greer

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself ... It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent. — Harper Lee

I was a scared kid ... I think I was born a nervous wreck, and I think movies were one way to find a way transferring my own private horrors to everyone else's lives. It was less of an escape and more of an exorcism. — Steven Spielberg

Be a witness, as I excersize my exorcism — Anthony Ian Berkeley

Why can someone
get so sick that the only way to get better is to make them more sick?
It's like the world's longest exorcism. It doesn't make sense that I can
chat with someone live on a tiny screen, that governments spend billions
of dollars on war and mayhem, that actors make millions of dollars
to just look pretty and skinny, yet no one can fucking fi gure out
how to cure cancer without torturing people. — Julie Halpern

Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that. — Marcus Aurelius

When jobs come up, like a low-budget film like The Last Exorcism, you say yes and you see where it takes you. — Patrick Fabian

Then everything is clear," Reynold said, looking around triumphantly at the crowd. "Jacques Cherbourg did not drown, he survived. He went to England, lived there a while, made a girl pregnant, and died. The girl gave birth to a boy and named him after the father. Jack here is now twenty, and looks exactly like his father did twenty-four years ago." Reynold looked at the priest. "No need for exorcism here, father. It's just a family reunion. — Ken Follett

Either way, excitement hummed through me as we headed out to the garage. I'd never seen an exorcism before. This should prove interesting.
"Can I yell 'By the power of Christ, I compel you' whenever we get to that point?" I asked.
"What?" Zayne laughed as he opened my passenger door. "Hate to break it to you, but we don't have to say a word and no one will be yelling anything like that."
I pouted. Dammit, I'd always wanted to say that. "Well, that's not nearly as entertaining as the exorcisms I've seen on TV. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Or The Last Exorcism, I researched a lot of real exorcisms. I watched videos of exorcisms, I listened to tapes, and I read actual accounts of priests' logs. I also looked at a lot of the physicality. I would look into fits of hysteria and look at energies of people in manic, hysteric fits. — Ashley Bell

The act was an exorcism of relief for Florentino Ariza, for when he put the violin back into its case and walked down the dead streets without looking back, he no longer felt that he was leaving the next morning but that he had gone away many years before with the irrevocable determination never to return. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This is the same notion - Catholic exorcism, psychotherapy, shamanistic practices - getting to the moment when whatever it was gained access. And also to the name of the spirit. Just to know that it's the Ugly Spirit. That's a great step. Because the spirit doesn't want its name to be known. — Allen Ginsberg

I dislike The Exorcist, and I found it a warning sign of the dangers in a furious cinematic talent putting the audience through it (a Hitchcock phrase) without purpose, or without the nagging moral anxiety that activated Hitch. You see, I don't think William Friedkin believes in the Devil, or cares about him. I think he found exorcism a pretext for a gross-out and he calculated there was an audience for it, or a crowd ready to be challenged. Maybe I'm too much of an atheist to stand religion being so thrashed. — Edward Jay Epstein

You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home ... Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism ... — William Peter Blatty

In addition to being dubbed the most "liberal" pontiff, Pope Francis has long been suspected of supporting exorcism. In may 2013, the pope reportedly exorcized a wheelchair bound man who was allegedly posessed by the devil. The Vatican insisted the pope "didn't intend to perform any exorcism," and it released a statement that said "he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him. — Anonymous

What is the meaning of Resurrection? ... is it not the exorcism of crippling unbelief, which renders us dead in life (Mark 9:22) rather than alive in our dying (8:35)? — Ched Myers

I'm going to go throw up now, because ive turned into my dad. If vomiting doesn't work, I'll see if I can get an exorcism. — Veronica Blade

The attempt to analyse was, of course, an attempt at exorcism. — P.D. James

On the morning of the exorcism, I stayed home from school. — Paul Tremblay

Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time. — Bret Easton Ellis

It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification. — Bruce McCall

The principal difference between her "seductive" and her other self-portraits was the absence of self-awareness in the former and its strong presence in the latter. With time, she became brutally direct. In her later self-portraits she was no longer beautiful, merely odd-looking. She did not seduce, she simply drew attention to herself. Her face became hard, serious. The pronounced cheekbones and heavy eyebrows looks as if they had been carved out of stone. The stern black eyes looked either straight through or straight past the viewer. She deliberately exaggerated the brutality of her self-portraits. She was saying: Look at me, I'm alive and it hurts. These self-portraits were like attestations to her existence: one, two, three, four...Exhibitionism, they said. But for her, painting self-portraits was a kind of magical rite, a kind of exorcism. — Slavenka Drakulic

And as the hour approached for the execution, in his own mind, Collins became both the executioner and the victim. He would pace up and down, transformed in almost a kind of exorcism when he knew he was responsible for taking someone's life. — Liam Neeson

After your performed the exorcism, how did you know that demon wasn't still in there, hiding? How do you know it didn't go in a hibernation state, quieting down to come out later, years and years later when no one would be around to help? Hey, how do you know if the wrong spirit left? What if you expelled the person's real spirit and only the demon's spirit was there to take its place? If I believed in any of that stuff, I'd be afraid that was going to happen to me. — Paul Tremblay

Photography is our exorcism. Primitive society had its masks, bourgeois society its mirrors. We have our images. — Jean Baudrillard

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about. — Louise Bourgeois

DEMONS MUST BE RELIGIOUS
Due to exorcism based on each religion's practices — Kamil Ali

In school I was always being cast as the clown. And then I did 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose,' and once people hear you scream, they can't un-hear it. But I don't mean to say that I've been typecast, either. — Jennifer Carpenter

The music is so euphoric,as a way of battling the words. It's like an exorcism, beating it out with drums, shake this demon out, it's so visceral because the melancholy has to be drummed out. I can't let it sit inside me. — Florence Welch

I murmur: "It's a seat," a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go and put itself on the thing. It stays what it is, with its red plush, thousands of little red paws in the air, all still, little dead paws. This enormous belly turned upward, bleeding, inflated - bloated with all its dead paws, this belly floating in this car, in this grey sky, is not a seat. It could just as well be a dead donkey tossed about in the water, floating with the current, belly in the air in a great grey river, a river of floods; and I could be sitting on the donkey's belly, my feet dangling in the clear water. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The gestures poems make are the same as the gestures of ritual injunction - curse; exorcism; prayer; underlying everything perhaps, the attempt to make someone or something live again. Both poet and shaman make a model that stands for the whole. Substitution, symbolic substitution. The mind conceives that something lived, or might live. Implicit is the demand to understand. The memorial that is ward and warning. Without these ancient springs poems are merely more words. — Frank Bidart

From the up-comming "Under A Twisted Moon"
"...here she was naked under a white gown silently holding her hands out and waiting for the pastor to anoint her head with water and oil and drive her demons away in this bastardized mix of baptism, exorcism, and cleansing. It's always the back hills churches that are the scariest. — Susan Simone

Everything's a haunted house in today's America. Everything's in need of an exorcism. — Seanan McGuire

The Old Man at the Wheel
Measured against the immeasurable
universe, no word you have spoken
brought light. Brought
light to what, as a child, you thought
too dark to be survived. By exorcism
you survived. By submission, then making.
You let all the parts of that thing you would
cut out of you enter your poem because
enacting there all its parts allowed you
the illusion you could cut it from your soul.
Dilemmas of choice given what cannot
change alone roused you to words.
As you grip the things that were young when
you were young, they crumble in your hand.
Now you must drive west, which in November
means driving directly into the sun. — Frank Bidart

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture — M. Scott Peck

Bongo's sobs are hurled out
like paintballs from a skirmish gun
until the force diminishes
into a trickle of sobs
that wind up the exorcism. — Emma Cameron

Haskell to Quinlin
You need anything, Quin, absolutely anything, you call me and I'll be there. Remember, friends help you move. Good friends help you move a body. Best friends bring their own shovel. You say the word, and I'll be there with a spanking new shovel. Or holy water and an exorcism ritual. Whatever works. — I.D. Locke

I had a lot of time to think, and that is not good for your mind. And when it actually happened, it was not so much a celebration but the relief. It was an exorcism anxiety. After each race there is a procedure in which you get taken off to the podium and the TV interviews. — Damon Hill

Performing an exorcism was like changing your oil. It's a drag, but necessary. — Keanu Reeves

Moshe Sluhovsky's fascinating study links spirit possession, exorcism, and mystical practice in early modern Europe. Women and men, healers and priestly exorcisers are caught up in a new quest for truth and introspection as they try to figure out whether these dramas of body and soul come from the devil or God. A stunning feat of scholarship and interpretation. — Natalie Zemon Davis

I imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die. — Phillip Lopate

I live in the borderlands. The word ghost sounds like memory. The word therapy means exorcism. My visions echo and multiplymultiply. I don't know how to figure out what they mean. I can't tell where they start or if they will end.
But I know this. If they shrink my head any more, or float me away on an ocean of pills, I will never return. — Laurie Halse Anderson

All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time. — Otto Dix

If you're in the exorcism business, you must know a lot about demons." "Qliphoth," he says. "What?" "It's the proper word for what you call a demon. A demon is a bogeyman, an irrational entity representing fear in the collective unconscious. The Qliphoth are the castoffs of a greater entity. The old gods. They're dumb and their lack of intelligence makes them pure evil." "Okay, Daniel Webster. What happened at the exorcism?" Traven takes a breath and stares at his hands for a minute. "You should know that I don't follow the Church's standard exorcism rites. For instance, I seldom speak Latin. If Qliphoth really are lost fragments of the Angra Om Ya, the older dark gods, they're part of creatures millions of years old. Why would Latin have any effect on them? — Richard Kadrey

I gave examples from my clinical practice of how love was not wholly a thought or feeling. I told of how that very evening there would be some man sitting at a bar in the local village, crying into his beer and sputtering to the bartender how much he loved his wife and children while at the same time he was wasting his family's money and depriving them of his attention. We recounted how this man was thinking love and feeling love
were they not real tears in his eyes?
but he was not in truth behaving with love. — M. Scott Peck

When the demons of criticism have fled the thoughts, the Angels of beauty preside - oh cheerful sweet world exorcised! — Gabriel Brunsdon

Love is an exorcism of angels. — Stephanie M. Wytovich

Lady," we always call each other, partly a joke, partly in earnest, using still the old word, in its full flavor a kind of exorcism against "saleslady," "old lady," "ladylike." Relishing the anachronism, even the formality a type of aphrodisiac, a contrast to our delight in the horny, the vulgar, the vernacular which we cultivate just as ardently. — Kate Millett

I have experienced bad dating and ineptitude with women all across the globe, from Vietnam to Paris. When I was 21, women were an enigma; they were this code that had to be cracked. They were 'The Other.' I have often thought writing this stuff into stand-up and shows would be an exorcism, but it hasn't been; it makes no difference. — Stephen Merchant

The exorcist had a slightly Australian tinge to his voice, and the laid-back, whatever-comes-next attitude of a man who had suddenly realised two degrees short of a sunstroke that exorcism was the perfect career choice he'd never been offered in school. — Kate Griffin

Of course, certain religious expressions are fine. If a tribe of Aqualishes wants to boil rhino horns in frog saliva on the National Mall to honor their deity, we'd have a commemorative postage stamp ready by next December. But let a Christian mention the baby Jesus to a kindergarten class and the ACLU wants an exorcism ... — Kathleen Parker

Possession and exorcism is something that's in every religion and every culture. It's a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go? — Eli Roth

I think music should be scary. Music is an exorcism. — Florence Welch

Humans have will. In an exorcism with a human, you are dealing with the human will, and whether that will is sufficiently resolved in terms of what allowed it to be manipulated. The will must have done something to surrender to the presence of the demon. You have to resurrect the moral authority of the person's will. — Bob Larson

Back down is an effective way to cast out strife spirit. — Toba Beta

Raphael continued to stare at me, in no hurry to get started. "You know the best way to get rid of a demon, right?" He asked with a serious face. I caught Ivy rolling her eyes as I shook my head.
"Exorcise alot!"
Ivy caught my expression of dismay. "It's okay, Beth. He's famous for his bad jokes. We're still waiting for him to grow up."
"And like Peter Pan, I hope to avoid that at all costs. — Alexandra Adornetto

To me, the scariest movie ever made to this day is 'The Exorcist.' It still scares the living hell out of me, and it's because of the fantasy element. It's the exorcism. It's the Devil. It's not a guy breaking into your house trying to torture you or cut your whatever off. Those kinds of movies don't do it for me, and I don't call them horror. — Cassandra Peterson

No ... I ... I had this spicy Mexican food last night. It's only a bad case of heartburn. I don't need an exorcism. i need some Pepto-Bismo! — Michelle Rowen

I always instruct my students to write a great deal. Write a journal. Take notes. Write when you are feeling wretched, when your mind is about to break down ... who knows what will float up to the surface? I am an unashamed believer in the magical powers of dreams; dreams enhance us. Even nightmares may be marketable
there is something to be said for the conscious, calculating exorcism of nightmares, if they give to us such works as those of Dostoyevsky, Celine,and Kafka. So the most important thing is to write, and to write nearly every day, in sickness and in health. In a while, in a few weeks or a few years, you can always make sense of that jumble of impressions ... or perhaps it will suddenly reveal its sense to you. — Joyce Carol Oates

It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house ; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed. — Shirley Jackson

He is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon. — T. S. Eliot

One of the things people don't know about exorcism, is that you can't really use exorcism on things that are older than Christianity. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

I was haunted by a bear attack that happened in Algonquin Park in 1991. The problem was that I don't believe in ghosts, so that ruled out an exorcism. My other choice was to start writing. — Claire Cameron

An "exorcism" carried out by these untrained individuals very often becomes a source of misinformation, unecessary pain, a sideshow circus atmosphere. Not to mention the very serious dangers inherent in the actions of such dubious individuals for the victims body and soul. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that we are able to recognize and find a legitimate exorcist. The first step should always be to ask your parish priest for direction. And as a rule NEVER pay money for such ministry. — Jack Ashcraft

And you shouldn't believe all the press about Ouija boards. They can't be used in an exorcism. Trivial Pursuit can, but that's another story. — Seanan McGuire

Still, it's really frustrating me that there doesn't seem to be anything in my closet that's appropriate to wear to an exorcism. — Paige McKenzie

I noticed the dudes in the ambulance were staying put; I hoped they were calling for backup, or maybe somebody who could do an exorcism, or maybe my pal Stephen King, because if anybody on earth could figure a way out of this mess, it'd be Uncle Stevie. — Tobe Hooper

You may continue to call it a breakup. I will continue to call it an exorcism. — Pleasefindthis

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda's, "My creatures are born of a long denial," seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge ... It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. — Julio Cortazar