Say “rationalist” to the average New Age chucklehead, and you conjured up unappetizing images: killjoys… — James Morrow
Say “rationalist” to the average New Age chucklehead, and you conjured up unappetizing images: killjoys obsessed with rules, boors fixated on order, logic-mongers skating around on the surface of things, missing the cosmic essence. Phooey. A rationalist could experience awe as readily as a shaman. But it had to be quality awe, Oliver believed, awe without illusions—the sort of awe he’d felt upon intuiting the size of the universe, or sensing the unlikeliness of his birth.
p. 109Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
Somehow his grandfather had wrought an honorable and glamorous life from the sea. But that era was gone. The system was dying. Advising a young man to join the United States Merchant Marine was like advising him to go into vaudeville.
p. 44
“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.”
p. 71
Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God.
p. 74
