James Morrow
Quotes
“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.”
p. 314
Like most visionaries, The Teller saw the distant future with optical-glass clarity, the intermediate future with beeswax clarity, and the immediate future with the clarity of dark glasses dipped in tar.
p. 153
Father says don’t kill your principles just because the government is paying for the funeral.
p. 257
“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.”
p. 112
Nature may not be benign, but she is reliable.
p. 157
Smugness kills all utopias.
p. 12
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
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
People found ever more ingenious ways to hate each other.
p. 12
“In fact, there’s probably only one thing worse than not being able to understand a person.”
“What’s that?” asked Nimrod.
“Being able to understand him completely.”
p. 76
“You see, Ebenezer, charity begs a crucial question. How did the bestower attain the position from which he now exercises his largesse?” My dead colleague cleaned his teeth with one of his many appended keys. “Through imagination and merit? Or through inherited privilege and ruthless exploitation?”
p. 158
As with all things political, the issue was power.
p. 140
