James K. Morrow: Doing

James K. Morrow is (1947-) science fiction author. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
James K. Morrow: 332   quotes 0   likes

““It’s tragic,” he said.
“God killed them with His hurricane,” she said.
“God had nothing to do with it.”
“Actually I agree with you, though for reasons quite different from yours.””

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 69)

God

““Your disciples will expect something even grander from you. They’ll want you to become a deity.”
She snickered and said, “I’m not ruling out that possibility.”
“What sort of deity? A hamadryad? Plato’s demiurge? The Creator God of Judeo-Christian revelation?”
“That job’s already taken,” she said.
“But you could do it better,” I said.
“When it comes to the physics, no, but in other areas—you’re right.””

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 13 (pp. 304-305)

God

“I figure that, given our “thrownness,” as Heidegger called it, we should work hard to become as bewildered as possible by this strange state of affairs, asking the most impertinent and audacious questions we can imagine. To do otherwise—and instead hand over the mystery of it all to dubious cults of expertise—is to waste one’s life, I feel.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), P. S. (p. 14)

Life , Feeling , Imagination , Question

“I’ve been good, I’ve been bad—nothing gets her attention. What am I supposed to do, sacrifice a goat?”
“Perhaps you should start a religion. You know—reveal your mother to the world.”
“How can I reveal her when I don’t know what she’s like?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“Use your imagination. Everybody else does.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 84)

World , Religion , Imagination

“Right before bed, I spend twenty minutes in this place. Then I can sleep.”
“You mean you simply sit here, staring at everybody’s pain? All you do is look at it?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

“Uh-huh. Just like God.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 74)

God , Pain , Sleep

“A corpse was far too easy a thing to rationalize. Christianity had been doing it for two thousand years.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 91)

““On your planet, how do you tell somebody that you love her?”
“It’s very complicated. You say, ‘I love you,’ and then you stand back and see what happens.””

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 9 (p. 112)

Love

“Everyone here does think as I do,” replied Nefertiti Jones’s double, “and consequently I have no enemies.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 10 (p. 119)

Thinking

““There’s something else, Beverly. I’m a minister of the Lord. This will be unusual for me, a kind of experiment.”
“I know all about it, Reverend. You folks do more experimenting than Princeton’s entire physics department.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 66)

“I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea. Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 5 (p. 108)

God , Idea , Universe

“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

“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

“When I destroyed my unwanted children, it was murder. When Yahweh did the same, it was eugenics. Do you approve of the universe, Ham?”

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge" p. 11 (originally published in Full Spectrum, edited by Lou Aronica and Shawna McCarthy)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Children , Universe

““What do you want out of life, Francis Lostwax?”
Francis smiled. “To never hurt anybody again.” His lack of hesitation surprised him. “To feel clean.””

James K. Morrow

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 27 (p. 314)

Life , Smile , Feeling , Hurt

“Those who can kill themselves do, and those who can’t, teach philosophy.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 295)

““Pop, do we have heaven?” he’d asked on the day he discovered the (dead) cat. “You want to know a Jew’s idea of heaven?” his father had replied, looking up from his Maimonides. “It’s an endless succession of long winter nights on which we get paid a fair wage to sit in a warm room and read all the books ever written… Not just the famous ones, no, every book, the stuff nobody gets around to reading, forgotten plays, novels by people you never heard of. However, I profoundly doubt such a place exists.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 1 (p. 13)

People , Books , Cats , Idea

“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

“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

“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