James K. Morrow: Trending quotes (page 6)

“He smiled. Julie’s wedding, exquisite thought. Would his grandchildren be free of godhead? Was divinity a recessive trait?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 5 (p. 92)

Smile , Wedding

““You want a motive, William? I’ve got a motive. Vengeance may not be a pretty word, but it’s what’s expected of us.”
“Right!” said Sverre. “We owe it to all those millions of dead people to make more millions of dead people. Be careful how you rewrite strategic doctrine, General, or you’ll come out of this war without a single medal.””

James K. Morrow

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 7, “In Which Our Hero Makes a Strategic Decision and Acquires a Reason Not to Curse God and Die” (p. 80)

War , People , Motivation , Dead

“Myriad contradictory worlds,” lectured Professor Jerome Delacato, “forever splitting off from each other like branches on a tree, so that, somewhere out there, I am presently giving a lecture explaining how the many-worlds hypothesis cannot possibly be true.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 5 (p. 88)

World , Tree

“The world’s odd tolerance of fighting cropped up again and again in Francis’s study of history, particularly ancient history. On Earth, where his remotest forebears lived, a person could be indisputably responsible for the deaths of thousands and still go down in the history books as some sort of great hero. This was before Francis understood the biological inevitability of violence, so he was bewildered. Why, he wanted to know, were the names of Samson, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Ulysses S. Grant, and Julius Caesar not obscenities, spoken after dark in whispers of revulsion and shame? The same teachers who couldn’t bring themselves to say shitbrain or ortwaddle openly discussed Alexander the Great.
He never found anyone who had the answer. Until he got to Planet Carlotta, he never even found anyone who had the question.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 19)

Death , Books , World , History

“The new homeland bulged with the sort of free-for-the-grabbing bounty that invites greed, envy, exploitation, profiteering, and politics.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

Envy

“The state flower of New Jersey is the common violet,” she explained, smirking, “the state bird is the eastern goldfinch, and the state fragrance is unrefined petroleum.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 14 (p. 319)

Flowers , Bird

“Francis realized he was afflicted with what his father used to term “an erection of the curiosity organ.””

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 11 (p. 132)

Affliction

““I’ve always regretted not having a brother. Maybe I shouldn’t.”
“For me it’s always been like having pubic hair. You have it, but what the hell is it for?””

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 9 (p. 110)

Hell

“When a species fixates on the supernatural, it ceases to mature.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 6 (p. 118)

“The labels fascinated Julie—Cutty Sark, Dewar’s, Beefeater—each logo dense with staid print and Anglo-Saxon dignity, as if alcohol were really a type of literary criticism and not a leading cause of traffic fatalities and brain rot.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 77)

Alcohol

“The man was fat. His belly arrived like an advance guard, heralding the bulk to come, huge shoulders, a surplus chin. His white cassock had settled over his body like a tarpaulin dropped on a blimp.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 12 (p. 214)

“Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 74)

God , Learning , Sea

“Francis’s office did not come with a videophone; at times he was surprised that his office came with a floor.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 25)

Time

““Are we innately aggressive?” asked Aquinas. “Was the nuclear predicament symptomatic of a more profound depravity? Nobody knows. But if this is so—and I suspect that it is—then the responsibility for what we are pleased to call our inhumanity still rests squarely in our blood-soaked hands. The killer-ape hypothesis does not specify a fate—it lays out an agenda. Beware, the fable warns. Caution. Trouble ahead. Genocidal weapons in the hands of creatures who are bored by peace.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” said Brat.
“But the fable went unheeded. And the weapons, unchecked. And then, one cold Christmas season, death came to an admirable species—a species that wrote symphonies and sired Leonardo da Vinci and would have gone to the stars. It did not have to be this way. Three virtues only were needed—creative diplomacy, technical ingenuity, and moral outrage. But the greatest of these is moral outrage.””

James K. Morrow

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 16, “In Which the Essential Question Is Answered and Something Very Much Like Justice Is Served” (p. 211)

Death , Fate , Peace , Way

“Better a citizen in hell than a slave in New Jersey.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 9 (p. 162)

Hell

“Be sure to convict that chucklehead. He thinks a country’s Christianity is measured by the size of its thermonuclear arsenal.”

James K. Morrow

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 13, “In Which the Prosecution’s Case Is Said to Be a Grin without a Cat” (p. 167)

Thinking , Country

“The undergraduates lamented the high price of textbooks and the equally outrageous fact that they were expected to read them.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 8 (p. 171)