James K. Morrow: Quotes about God

“I’ve gone insane, Michael decided, retrieving a cowhide-bound appointments book from his valise. Only certifiable schizophrenics showed meetings with God on their calendars.”

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 68 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

God , Books

“Being God, I must choose My words carefully. People, I’ve noticed, tend to hang on to My every remark. It gets annoying, this servile and sycophantic streak in Homo sapiens sapiens. There’s a difference, after all, between tasteful adulation and arrant toadyism, but they just don’t get it.”

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 61 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

God , People

““You see God as an engineer?” asked Urpastor Phelps.
“I don’t see God as anything at all.”
“An engineer, you said. An incompetent engineer.”
“Incompetent, perfect, who knows? God is whatever we agree to pretend God is. God is our image of God.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 16 (p. 272)

God , Perfection

“JOB. And now it’s time…
FRANNY. To curse God…
JOB. And live.”

James K. Morrow

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 46: The Soap Opera" p. 184 (originally published in Science Fiction Age, January 1994; ellipses in the original)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

God , Time

““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

“What good is it having God for a mother if she never sends you a birthday card?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 3 (p. 50)

God , Birthday

““Another boyfriend?”
“A character in one of my plays. Runkleberg’s my twentieth-century Abraham. One fine morning he’s out watering his roses, and he hears God’s voice telling him to sacrifice his son.”
“Does he obey?”
“His wife intervenes.”
“How?”
“She castrates him with his hedge clippers, and he bleeds to death.””

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 71)

Death , God , Water

“People are always asking, does God exist? Of course she does. The real question: what is she like?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 69)

God , People , Question

““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

“Then there is the final possibility, my favorite.
—Yes?
—The final possibility is that I’m God.
—You’re God?
—Just a theory, but the data are provocative. I mean, look at me. Faceless, shapeless, holey, undifferentiated, Jewish, inscrutable…and a hermaphrodite to boot. Years ago, I told you sponges cannot be fatally dismembered, for each part quickly becomes the whole. To wit, I am both immortal and infinite.
—You’re God? You’re God herself? You?
—The data are provocative.
—God is a sponge? A sponge? There’s not much comfort in that.
—Agreed.
—Sponges can’t help us.
—Neither can God, as far as I can tell. I’d be happy to see some contrary data.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 18 (p. 312)

God , Help , Parting , Happiness

“I shall never cease to marvel at the clarity of stars when viewed from midocean, each as sharp and bright as the laser pointer God uses when lecturing the angels on evolution.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 14 (p. 333)

God , Angels , Star

“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

“Curse God, and die. To George it seemed like remarkably sage and relevant advice.”

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. 61)

God

“With a rush of joy, I realized that this Darwinist stance would appeal neither to secular Marxists, for whom moral lessons lay exclusively within history’s brute curriculum, nor to evangelical Christians, for whom a naturalist ethics was a contradiction in terms, nor to middle-class mystics, who detested any argument smacking of biological determinism. A philosophical position that could simultaneously antagonize the collectivist left, the God-besotted right, and the Aquarian fringe must, I decided, have a lot going for it.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 1 (p. 4)

God , History , Joy

““Actually, the answer’s quite simple.” Two red eyes floated in the mist.
“Really? Tell me. Why does God allow evil?”
The red eyes vanished, leaving only the lantern and the night. “Because power corrupts,” said Wyvern’s disembodied voice. “And absolute power corrupts absolutely.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 85)

God , Evil , Night

“You wouldn’t like him. Major fanatic. Confuses migraine headaches with God.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 84)

God

“There are none so blind as those who see angels…None so deaf as those who hear gods.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 17 (p. 288)

God , Angels

“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

“It’s an old story, perhaps the oldest on earth,” Joan said. “The sky rumbles, the clouds congeal, the sun spasms. Is that a saint I see on high? An angel? The Lord God Jehovah himself? Now a holy voice booms down, instructing the poor prophet to grab a sword and thrust it into a fellow human, or perhaps a hundred fellow humans, or even a million if the cause is sufficiently sacred. The prophet never talks back. The tradition existed before me. It flourishes to this day. The sword, the blood, the freshly created corpses littering the battlefield, exuding the stink of epiphany.”

James K. Morrow

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 10 (p. 243)

God , Angels , Sun

“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