James Morrow

Quotes

1. Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.

   I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.

   p. 253

2. 

   “I knew this guy one, a demac on the Amoco Cádiz, dying of bone cancer. You know what he said? ‘When they give you morphine like there’s no tomorrow, there isn’t.’”

   p. 321

3. 

   Life’s meaning doesn’t come from God! Life’s meaning comes from life!

   p. 178

4. 

   I think you’re so full of shit you’ve got roses growing out of your ass.

   p. 96

5. 

   “Myriad contradictory worlds,” lectured Professor Jerome Delacato, “forever splitting off from each other like branches on a tree, so that, somewhere out there, I am presently giving a lecture explaining how the many-worlds hypothesis cannot possibly be true.”

   p. 88

6. 

   The Sermon on the Mount—it never ends for you, does it? If somebody kicks your right buttock, turn the other cheek.

   p. 260

7. 

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

   p. 84

8. 

   What most people don’t realize is that something unprecedented has entered the world. Bang—science—and suddenly a proposition is true because it’s true, Julie, not because its adherents have the biggest churches or the grandest inquisitors or the most weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

   p. 88

9. 

   He was a devout believer in the second chance. To the man who asked, “What’s the point of closing the barn door after the horse has been stolen?” Murray would answer, “The point is that the door is now closed.”

   p. 12

10. 

    “The universe,” says Wyvern, “is a Ph. D. thesis that God was unable to successfully defend.”

    p. 221

11. 

    “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.”

    p. 272

12. 

    He smiled. Julie’s wedding, exquisite thought. Would his grandchildren be free of godhead? Was divinity a recessive trait?

    p. 92