James K. Morrow: Trending quotes (page 8)

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“When Cassie Fowler awoke, she was less shocked to discover that an afterlife existed than to find that she, of all people, had been admitted to it. Her entire adulthood, it seemed, year after year of spiting the Almighty and saluting the Enlightenment, had come to nothing. She’d been saved, raptured, immortalized. Shit. The situation spoke badly of her and worse of eternity. What heaven worthy of the name would accept so ardent an unbeliever as she?”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 67)

Adulthood , People

“Don’t believe everything you hear about hell. Next time you run into some anti-hell propaganda, consider the source.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“You inflict eternal punishment on people,” Julie countered.
“Merely because it’s our job. And remember, we persecute only the guilty, which puts us one up on most other institutions.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 9 (p. 162)

Hell , Time

“There’s something else, Beverly. I’m a minister of the Lord. This will be unusual for me, a kind of experiment.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“I know all about it, Reverend. You folks do more experimenting than Princeton’s entire physics department.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 66)

“It must have been hard converting your elders in the Pentagon to this view.”

James K. Morrow

“Ever try stuffing a melted marshmallow up a wildcat’s ass? It can be done, but you have to like your job.”
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. 165)

“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.”

James K. Morrow

“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.”
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)

Motivation

“What do you want out of life, Francis Lostwax?”

James K. Morrow

Francis smiled. “To never hurt anybody again.” His lack of hesitation surprised him. “To feel clean.”
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 27 (p. 314)

Life

“Talo, it would appear that our sons are growing up.”

James K. Morrow

She tut-tutted in mock solemnity. “And we always said, ‘It can’t happen here.’”
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 25 (p. 296)

Appearance

“On your planet, how do you tell somebody that you love her?”

James K. Morrow

“It’s very complicated. You say, ‘I love you,’ and then you stand back and see what happens.”
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 9 (p. 112)

Love , Making love

“In fact, there’s probably only one thing worse than not being able to understand a person.”

James K. Morrow

“What’s that?” asked Nimrod.
“Being able to understand him completely.”
"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)

Personality , Understanding

“Much as I hate to admit it, humanity will get along perfectly well without me. Any species that could invent the twentieth century entirely on its own doesn’t need a Prince of Darkness.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 402; spoken by the Devil)

Hate

“Bitterness is not a philosophy, friend. Outrage is not an ethic. Stop counting corpses and reach a truce with the universe, or you’ll be stuck on the dung heap forever.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 392)

Universe

“You aspired to be God’s advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God’s advocate was ipso facto my advocate. Theodicy’s a sucker’s game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity’s obligation wasn’t to worship Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe as Auschwitz...that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil’s work for him.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 391; spoken by the Devil)

Universe , Personality , Game , God

“I am what I am. I am Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan, Heaven and Hiroshima, Arcadia and Auschwitz.” Smiling devilishly, Sarkos lumbered up to Lovett. “Get it, fat boy? God is a duality. Dr. Jehovah and Mr. Hyde.” He lobbed the bottle cap into his mouth and chewed. “Allow me to tell you a bedtime story. It’s called ‘The Day the Gas Chambers Malfunctioned at Auschwitz.’ On second thought, why bother? You know the plot—the title gives it away—I’m surprised Braverman and Kelvin left it out of their overblown epic. Can you imagine how it feels to be a seven-year-old Jewish child, standing in line with hundreds of other Jewish children, waiting your turn to be thrown alive onto an open fire?”

James K. Morrow

Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. “Don’t you see? It’s the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.”
Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 390; spoken by the Devil, named Jonathan Sarkos in the book)

God , Imagination , Waiting , Smile

“Do you really think your terrestrial counterpart is living in the best of all possible worlds? Where I come from, an eighth grader would be ashamed to enter planet Earth in a junior high school science fair.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 387)

School , Science , Thinking , World

“To close the gap between jurisprudence and justice would require a canon of a hundred million laws.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 383)

Justice , Law

“How’re you feeling?”

James K. Morrow

“I highly recommend cancer. It’s worth it just for the drugs.”
Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 14 (p. 361)

Feeling

“If nothing else, their adventure had proved that God was not about to put science out of business.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 259)

Business , Science , God

“Although covetousness is not my only flaw, it seems to cause me more pain than all my other sins combined.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 255; spoken by the Devil)

Pain

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Soul , Hell , Imagination , Time

“I stand before you today not as your hypothetical descendant but as the ambassador of my kind. The statistics, as you may know, are appalling: two of us sloughed off for every six who make it into the world. In all of history, there was never a more prolific abortionist than God Almighty. Make sure the tribunal learns that fact.”

James K. Morrow

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 10 (p. 234)

God , History , Learning , World