James Morrow

Quotes

1. Every religion says war is evil, but one way or another they end up playing along.

   p. 164

2. 

   Nature may not be benign, but she is reliable.

   p. 157

3. 

   Smugness kills all utopias.

   p. 12

4. 

   Burne was tough. Burne practiced archeology, the most inconvenient of the sciences.

   p. 9

5. 

   In Francis’s view there was ultimate gold in this commitment to impractical knowledge, to theories that had no responsibilities other than to be true. On good days the new ideas inched human intellect toward the grand understandings that were science’s pride and joy.

   p. 130

6. 

   Like all good friends, they hated seeing their relationship lose its emotional innocence, its chastity of good will, and now that the thing was lost, now that searing statements had changed hands and left scars, neither looked forward to the future.

   p. 160

7. 

   Sneer, frown, and be miserable, for tomorrow you live.

   p. 202

8. 

   Luli turned out to be uncompromising and brilliant. She could prosecute honey before a jury of bears and win.

   p. 21

9. 

   Francis’s office did not come with a videophone; at times he was surprised that his office came with a floor.

   p. 25

10. 

    “That was a very pretty speech,” said Loloc, “but if it contained an answer to even one of my questions then I did not hear it.”

    p. 178

11. 

    People found ever more ingenious ways to hate each other.

    p. 12

12. 

    Francis had always been ecumenical in his atheism. He was as prepared to disbelieve in this Tolca character as he was to disbelieve in Yahweh, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, or any of the other words for what his father used to call “forcing yourself to misperceive the obvious.”

    p. 83