“I am myself, though from moment to moment something else seems to be looking on.”
Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper<!-- p. 42 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: I am myself, though from moment to moment something else seems to be looking on. Whatever will be required of me, however, can best be done if I remember who I am.
Guardian Dismé Latimer in Ch. 46 : nell latimer's journal<!-- , p. 498 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: To the Chasmites, truth is determined by how well it fits their expectations, and doesn't that sound familiar?... They have consistently refused to have a god contest, and I fear they will have to encounter the godlet rather forcibly before they believe there is anything there at all.
The Visitor (2002)
Context: The Regime has become so smug it can't tell the difference among the revolutionary, the innovative, or the merely various. The high command knows so little about the outside that if I came back with a fully equipped chemical laboratory and told them I'd found it in a cave, they'd probably believe that, so long as I brought it back piecemeal in my saddle bags, thus proving I hadn't known it was there beforehand.
Ch. 37 : leaving bastion
Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: I say the entities that are named as gods by Earthians are imagined into being by Earthians as personal helper-buddies, justifiers, threateners (my god can beat up your god). They don't "run on" anything any more than a mirror image "runs on" anything. They merely reflect what people want them to be. "I want to have more children than my brother does, thus proving I'm a better man than he is, so my god tells me I should have a big family." "I want to screw women, so my god is going to give me seventy virgins I can screw for all eternity." The "gods" in The Margarets who could really do anything were actually an old, highly evolved race of real people. The others were only reflections. The real God, who may really exist, is outside all that, perhaps watching closely, perhaps merely asleep for a few trillion years while the experiment runs out.
We — thee and me as individuals — will never know that God, though after a few trillion years, the universe as a whole may come to understand that God.
The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Not many years before the Happening, one of your country's largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly the first one. Of course they liked the book better! It was full of magic and contradictions that they could quote to reinforce their bigoted and hateful opinions, as I well know, for I chose many parts of it from among the scrolls and epistles that were lying around in caves here and there. They're correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it.
“I will be a sham, but not a snob.”
The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: I will be a sham, but not a snob. I will let every man, woman, or child, no matter how greedy or wicked, claim to have a personal relationship with me. In other words, I will be as arbitrary, inconsistent, ignorant, pushy, and common as humans are, and what more have they ever wanted in a god?
“They're correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it.”
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Not many years before the Happening, one of your country's largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly the first one. Of course they liked the book better! It was full of magic and contradictions that they could quote to reinforce their bigoted and hateful opinions, as I well know, for I chose many parts of it from among the scrolls and epistles that were lying around in caves here and there. They're correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it.
The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
“Ignorance perpetuates itself just as knowledge does.”
Arnole, in Ch. 45 : not in conclusion
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Ignorance perpetuates itself just as knowledge does. Men write false documents, they preach false doctrine, and those beliefs survive to inspire wickedness in later generations.... Conversely, some men write and teach about the truth, only to be declared heretic by the wicked. In such cases evil has the advantage, for it will do anything to suppress truth, but the good man limits what he will do to suppress falsehood.
One might almost make a rule of it: "Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic."
Arnole, in Ch. 45 : not in conclusion
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Ignorance perpetuates itself just as knowledge does. Men write false documents, they preach false doctrine, and those beliefs survive to inspire wickedness in later generations.... Conversely, some men write and teach about the truth, only to be declared heretic by the wicked. In such cases evil has the advantage, for it will do anything to suppress truth, but the good man limits what he will do to suppress falsehood.
One might almost make a rule of it: "Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic."
Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper<!-- p. 42 -->
Source: The Visitor (2002)
Context: You asked for wisdom? Hear these words. Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
Strange Horizons interview (2008)
“Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.”
Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 385)
The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor (p. 465)
The Visitor (2002)
The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 16 (p. 173)
“If God is truly powerful, He would not let this plague go on.”
Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 11 (p. 208)
“The extent of my ignorance oppresses me.”
Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 16 (p. 171)
Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 7 (pp. 140-141)