James K. Morrow: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Say “rationalist” to the average New Age chucklehead, and you conjured up unappetizing images: killjoys obsessed with rules, boors fixated on order, logic-mongers skating around on the surface of things, missing the cosmic essence. Phooey. A rationalist could experience awe as readily as a shaman. But it had to be quality awe, Oliver believed, awe without illusions—the sort of awe he’d felt upon intuiting the size of the universe, or sensing the unlikeliness of his birth.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 5, “Teeth” (p. 109)

Age , Birth , Sense , Universe

““I’m really interested in this stuff.” Julie rubbed a carton labeled ELEMENTARY PARTICLES.
“Physics?”
“Physics, biology, stars, everything.”
Howard said, “Good for you. These days most people prefer to impoverish their minds with mysticism.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 5 (p. 87)

People , Star

“Now we’re getting somewhere, George told himself, although he sensed that this situation would not endure.”

James K. Morrow

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 4, “In Which Our Hero Is Asked to Sign a Most Unusual Sales Contract” (p. 43)

Sense

“The Sermon on the Mount—it never ends for you, does it? If somebody kicks your right buttock, turn the other cheek.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 15 (p. 260)

““In fact, there’s probably only one thing worse than not being able to understand a person.”
“What’s that?” asked Nimrod.
“Being able to understand him completely.””

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 76 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Understanding , Personality

“Let us examine the language here. Evidently God is addressing this code to a patriarchy that will in turn disseminate it among the less powerful, namely wives and servants. And how long before these servants are downgraded further still…into slaves, even? Ten whole commandments, and not one word against slavery, not to mention bigotry, misogyny, or war.”

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant" p. 130 (originally published in What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

God , War

“The universe,” says Wyvern, “is a Ph. D. thesis that God was unable to successfully defend.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 13 (p. 221)

God , Universe

“Maybe I’ll end up on the fun side of her pants some day.”

James K. Morrow

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 6, “In Which a Sea Captain, a General, a Therapist, and a Man of God Enter the Tale” (p. 66)

“What I love about fiction is the way this form of expression allows an author to wrestle an idea to the ground, as opposed to the bumper-sticker dialectics that pass for political and philosophical discourse in most sectors of our culture. In the age of mass communication, we need the quiet, contemplative and often ambiguous medium of the novel more than ever.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), P. S. (p. 13)

Love , Age , Way , Communication

“Children, being close to the ground, have a special rapport with insects.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 17)

Children

“There’s nothing quite so pernicious as wishful thinking.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 11, “War” (p. 285)

Thinking

“Although Bix Constantine disbelieved in hell as intensely as he did in heaven, he knew what the place would be like. Hell, for Bix, was jealousy. It was failed journalists seeing their enemies receive Pulitzer Prizes. It was compulsive gamblers seeing jackpots gush from adjacent players’ slot machines and sex-starved young men seeing their friends piled high with naked cheerleaders.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 8 (p. 144)

Men , Jealousy , Sex , Hell

“Imagine that a team of neuroscientists has just unveiled a technology that lets a person remove all trace of some terrible experience from his brain. Under what conditions, if any, would you use it? What might it be like to go through life knowing you’d once suffered an ordeal so dreadful that it demanded radical excision? How long could you endure this strange affirmative ignorance, this lost access to the unspeakable, without becoming neurotic, or even slightly mad? In the long run, might you not decide that such circumscribed amnesia was worse than whatever memory you’d felt compelled to erase?”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 17 (p. 400)

Life , Imagination , Suffering , Memory

“If You intervene too profusely in Earth’s affairs, I’ve noticed, the inhabitants become chronically distracted, and they forget to worship You.”

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 67 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Forgetting

“She asked, “Do you believe science has all the answers?”
“Huh?”
“Science. Does it have all the answers?”
“Everybody thinks he’s being oh-so-deep when he says science doesn’t have all the answers.”
Done. All of it. Virginity gone, flesh ratified, mother spited, mission discovered—the gospel of empirical truth! Yes! Oh, yes!
“Science does have all the answers,” said Howard, withdrawing. “The problem is that we don’t have all the science.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 5 (p. 90)

Truth , Problem , Thinking , Science

“Often Burne found himself saying, “I don’t think you would make a very good soldier,” and with grating predictability he heard that he wouldn’t make a very good pacifist.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 188)

Thinking

“I wish more English teachers helped their students engage the classics at the level of raw delight, instead of putting them on the scent of symbols. A novel is not a cryptogram.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), P. S. (p. 15)

Teachers , Help

“Life’s meaning doesn’t come from God! Life’s meaning comes from life!”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 7, “Island” (p. 178)

Life , God

“Recent biblical exegesis by Anthem’s newest organization, Hermeneutics Unlimited, had established beyond doubt that Jesus Christ was adamantly opposed to universal health-care insurance, class-action lawsuits, and corporate whistleblowers. Several prominent postrationalist theologians had successfully exposed public education for the misguided Marxist boondoggle it was, while a majority in Congress now advocated replacing the secular school system with private academies committed to sparing children the bad news that Charles Darwin had brought back from the Galápagos Islands.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 292)

Children , Health , Education , School

“Murray held his daughter at arm’s length. “Does God…er, visit you?”
“She doesn’t even whisper to me. I listen, but she doesn’t talk. It’s not fair.”
God didn’t talk. The best news he’d heard since Gabriel Frostig announced his embryo. “Look Julie, it’s good she doesn’t talk. God asks her children to do crazy things. It’s good she doesn’t whisper. Understand?”
“I guess.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Where’d the crab go? Is he looking for his friends?””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

A profound weariness pressed upon Murray. “Yes. Right. His friends. It’s good God doesn’t whisper.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 2 (p. 46)

God , Children , Understanding , Daughters