Good Omens

by

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Crowley, a demon from Hell, is one of the novel’s protagonists. He’s suave, he always wears dark clothes and sunglasses, and he drives a vintage Bentley that’s his pride and joy. He implies that he started life in Heaven as an angel but eventually fell from Heaven. When readers first meet him, he’s in his serpent form and goes by the name Crawly—and he’s just tempted Adam and Eve (the first man and woman, according to the Bible) to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Six thousand years later, Crowley has made a life for himself in the modern world and loves everything that Earth has to offer. He’s therefore distraught when he’s tasked with delivering the Antichrist to his human parents, thereby setting off Armageddon (the end of the world) in 11 years’ time. Because of Crowley’s deep love of humanity and Earth, he conspires with his friend (and sometimes enemy) Aziraphale to stop Armageddon from happening. Though Crowley insists throughout the novel that he doesn’t have free will, he’s also very good at manipulating predestined circumstances to work out in his favor. For instance, when it comes to stopping Armageddon, Crowley convinces Aziraphale to help by noting that Armageddon is a diabolical plan—and as an angel, Aziraphale is duty-bound to try to stop it. Crowley is also convinced that life isn’t worth living if things are only good or only bad. He can’t stand the thought of either Hell or Heaven winning the Great War that’s supposed to take place after Armageddon. In addition, Crowley is intensely interested in what makes human beings human. It’s baffling to him that people can use free will to choose to be good or evil—and that human beings are usually a combination of both. But despite this confusion, Crowley loves people—so much so that he sacrifices his Bentley to try to stop Armageddon. Through this quest, Crowley comes to find that everyone—even angels and demons—contain both good and evil.

Crowley/Crawly Quotes in Good Omens

The Good Omens quotes below are all either spoken by Crowley/Crawly or refer to Crowley/Crawly. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Good and Evil Theme Icon
).
Eleven Years Ago Quotes

“I tied up every portable telephone system in Central London for forty-five minutes at lunchtime,” he said.

There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.

[...]

What could he tell them? That twenty thousand people got bloody furious? That you could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city? And that then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people? In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Hastur, Ligur
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

And that’d be that. No more world. That’s what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending on who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn’t know which was worse.

Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.

But there was no getting out of it. You couldn’t be a demon and have free will.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, God
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Sister Mary Loquacious/Mary Hodges, God
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

And just when you’d think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to him once. The whole point, he’d said [...] was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Related Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

As they drove past an astonished traffic warden his notebook spontaneously combusted, to Crowley’s amazement.

“I’m pretty certain I didn’t mean to do that,” he said.

Aziraphale blushed.

“That was me,” he said. “I had always thought that your people invented them.”

“Did you? We thought they were yours.”

Related Characters: Aziraphale (speaker), Crowley/Crawly (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Bentley
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

“Don’t tell me from genetics. What’ve they got to do with it?” said Crowley. “Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.”

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Aziraphale, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Satan
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Wednesday Quotes

They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully functioning human brain could conceive, then shout “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

Related Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Warlock, Satan
Page Number: 76-77
Explanation and Analysis:
Saturday Quotes

1111. An the Great Hound sharl coom, and the Two Powers sharl watch in Vane, for it Goeth where is its Master, where they Wot Notte, and he sharl name it, True to Ittes Nature, and Hell sharl flee it.

Related Characters: Agnes Nutter (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Anathema Device, Newton “Newt” Pulsifer, Warlock
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren’t deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors—doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operations of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren’t paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Hastur, Ligur
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:

But, to look on the bright side, all this only went to prove that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Right now, across the country, people who would otherwise have been made just that little bit more tense and angry by being summoned from a nice bath, or having their names mispronounced at them, were instead feeling quite untroubled and at peace with the world. As a result of Hastur’s action a wave of low-grade goodness started to spread exponentially through the population, and millions of people who ultimately would have suffered minor bruises of the soul did not in fact do so. So that was all right.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Hastur
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

“What you’re all sayin’,” he summed up, [...] “is that it wouldn’t be any good at all if the Greasy Johnsonites beat the Them or the other way round?”

“That’s right,” said Pepper. [...] “Everyone needs a Greasy Johnson.”

“Yeah,” said Adam. “That’s what I thought. It’s no good anyone winning.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Pepper (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Wensleydale, Brian, Greasy Johnson
Page Number: 292
Explanation and Analysis:

Everyone found their eyes turning toward Adam. He seemed to be thinking very carefully.

Then he said: “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Satan, God, The Metatron, Beelzebub
Page Number: 337
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’d just like to say,” he said, “if we don’t get out of this, that...I’ll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you.”

“That’s right,” said Crowley bitterly. “Make my day.”

Aziraphale held out his hand.

“Nice knowing you,” he said.

Crowley took it.

“Here’s to the next time,” he said. “And...Aziraphale?”

“Yes.”

“Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.”

Related Characters: Aziraphale (speaker), Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Adam Young/The Antichrist, Satan
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Good Omens LitChart as a printable PDF.
Good Omens PDF

Crowley/Crawly Quotes in Good Omens

The Good Omens quotes below are all either spoken by Crowley/Crawly or refer to Crowley/Crawly. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Good and Evil Theme Icon
).
Eleven Years Ago Quotes

“I tied up every portable telephone system in Central London for forty-five minutes at lunchtime,” he said.

There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.

[...]

What could he tell them? That twenty thousand people got bloody furious? That you could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city? And that then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people? In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Hastur, Ligur
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

And that’d be that. No more world. That’s what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending on who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn’t know which was worse.

Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.

But there was no getting out of it. You couldn’t be a demon and have free will.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, God
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Sister Mary Loquacious/Mary Hodges, God
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

And just when you’d think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to him once. The whole point, he’d said [...] was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Related Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

As they drove past an astonished traffic warden his notebook spontaneously combusted, to Crowley’s amazement.

“I’m pretty certain I didn’t mean to do that,” he said.

Aziraphale blushed.

“That was me,” he said. “I had always thought that your people invented them.”

“Did you? We thought they were yours.”

Related Characters: Aziraphale (speaker), Crowley/Crawly (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Bentley
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

“Don’t tell me from genetics. What’ve they got to do with it?” said Crowley. “Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.”

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Aziraphale, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Satan
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Wednesday Quotes

They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully functioning human brain could conceive, then shout “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

Related Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Warlock, Satan
Page Number: 76-77
Explanation and Analysis:
Saturday Quotes

1111. An the Great Hound sharl coom, and the Two Powers sharl watch in Vane, for it Goeth where is its Master, where they Wot Notte, and he sharl name it, True to Ittes Nature, and Hell sharl flee it.

Related Characters: Agnes Nutter (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Adam Young/The Antichrist, Anathema Device, Newton “Newt” Pulsifer, Warlock
Related Symbols: Dog (The Hell-Hound)
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren’t deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors—doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operations of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren’t paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Hastur, Ligur
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:

But, to look on the bright side, all this only went to prove that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Right now, across the country, people who would otherwise have been made just that little bit more tense and angry by being summoned from a nice bath, or having their names mispronounced at them, were instead feeling quite untroubled and at peace with the world. As a result of Hastur’s action a wave of low-grade goodness started to spread exponentially through the population, and millions of people who ultimately would have suffered minor bruises of the soul did not in fact do so. So that was all right.

Related Characters: Crowley/Crawly, Hastur
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

“What you’re all sayin’,” he summed up, [...] “is that it wouldn’t be any good at all if the Greasy Johnsonites beat the Them or the other way round?”

“That’s right,” said Pepper. [...] “Everyone needs a Greasy Johnson.”

“Yeah,” said Adam. “That’s what I thought. It’s no good anyone winning.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Pepper (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Wensleydale, Brian, Greasy Johnson
Page Number: 292
Explanation and Analysis:

Everyone found their eyes turning toward Adam. He seemed to be thinking very carefully.

Then he said: “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”

Related Characters: Adam Young/The Antichrist (speaker), Aziraphale, Crowley/Crawly, Satan, God, The Metatron, Beelzebub
Page Number: 337
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’d just like to say,” he said, “if we don’t get out of this, that...I’ll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you.”

“That’s right,” said Crowley bitterly. “Make my day.”

Aziraphale held out his hand.

“Nice knowing you,” he said.

Crowley took it.

“Here’s to the next time,” he said. “And...Aziraphale?”

“Yes.”

“Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.”

Related Characters: Aziraphale (speaker), Crowley/Crawly (speaker), Adam Young/The Antichrist, Satan
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis: