The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words: “Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven”

In the actual language of the Lost, the words will be different, no doubt. One will say he has always served his country right or wrong; another that he has sacrificed everything to his art; and some that they’ve never been taken in; and some that, thank God, they’ve always looked after Number One; and nearly all, that, at least, they’ve been true to themselves.

There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to Joy – that is, to reality.

Of some sinful pleasure they say: “Let me but have this, and I’ll take the consequences”, little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. 

The process begins even before death. The bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why the Lost will say: “We were always in hell”

They are those to whom God says, in the end: “Thy will be done.” 

All that are in hell choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no hell.

Ye can call those sad streets the Valley of the Shadow of Death. if they leave that grey town behind it will not have been hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory.

For those who remain there it will have been hell even from the beginning.

C.S. Lewis – The Great Divorce