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James K. Morrow
179 quotes
“It’s tragic,” he said. “God killed them with His hurricane,” she said. “God had nothing to do with it.” “Actually I agree with you, though for reasons quite different from yours.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had long ago accepted the fact that, when it came to the affectations with which radical feminists liked to impoverish their minds—crystal therapy, neo-paganism, Wicca—her skepticism placed her emphatically in a minority.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the most portentous mission since Saul of Tarsus has suffered an epileptic seizure and called it Christianity.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A corpse was far too easy a thing to rationalize. Christianity had been doing it for two thousand years.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t see you at Mass anymore.” “It’s like fucking, Father. You gotta be up for it.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life’s meaning doesn’t come from God! Life’s meaning comes from life!”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That maxim, it’s not an argument against atheism—it’s an argument against foxholes.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s nothing quite so pernicious as wishful thinking.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her audacity turned him on. There was nobody quite so arousing, he decided, as a worthy opponent.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.’”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under the midnight sun, despair acquires the intensity of sex, insomnia the vehemence of art.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On three occasions, Martin had wed a man to a man; twice, a woman to a woman. Although these same-sex unions scandalized many of his fellow Republicans, he performed them with equanimity, believing that the principle of laissez-faire should apply no less to the bedroom than to the marketplace.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love does strange things to a man’s sense of proportion, which is why—contrary to rumor—it is by no means the Devil’s least favorite emotion.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But just because our Creator subcontracts evil out to me, we mustn’t neglect to notice the blood on His hands.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am the Father of Lies. Over the years, my children have done me proud. I shouldn’t play favorites, but I am especially pleased with “The meek shall inherit the earth.” Likewise, I shall always retain a soft spot in my heart for “Every cloud has a silver lining.” As for “Time heals all wounds” and “Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window”—they, too, make me gloat unconscionably.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As usual, He underestimated the human potential for self-deception.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never underestimate the value of a falsehood, friends. Never doubt the power of a lie. Blessed are the mendacious, for they shall grow wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And what are you?” “Me? I knew God was dead even before the corpse showed up.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God is out of the loop,” said Martin...“He’s left the scene”—he grimaced, realizing what he was about to say—“of His crimes.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my protracted sojourn on this planet, Mr. Candle, I have come to value three commodities above all others: good books, decent claret, and worthy opponents.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For many citizens of the Western world, this situation proved, as you might imagine, troubling—especially in the United States, where reality has never enjoyed a great deal of prestige.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I said my standard grace—“Dear Lord, we know You have good reasons for allowing thousands of children to starve in various undeveloped nations, and we thank You for concomitantly supplying our own table with these grossly superfluous portions, amen”—after which we all dug in.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You should be talking to a doctor of theology, not a Father of Lies. The distinction is subtle but real.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t get testy with me, sir. I am Augustine of Hippo Regius, discoverer of concupiscence. Between my legs hangs the axis on which will turn the brave new world of Christian antieroticism.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I cannot respect any theory of evil that so neatly immunizes itself against empirical disconfirmation,” said Gordon. “All theodicies requiring belief in an afterlife are manifestly begging the question.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It doesn’t derive from any sort of biology,” snapped Augustine. “It derives from sound reasoning and the Book of Genesis. ‘In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.’” “Through Adam’s shlong, our race went wrong,” replied Saperstein, jeering. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but it just won’t wash, either scientifically or theologically.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stand before you today not as your hypothetical descendant but as the ambassador of my kind. The statistics, as you may know, are appalling: two of us sloughed off for every six who make it into the world. In all of history, there was never a more prolific abortionist than God Almighty. Make sure the tribunal learns that fact.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He set down the paddle, lowered his head, and, as tears squirted from his eyes, began pondering the curious fact that in the entire Book of Job the sufferer never once lamented the loss of his children.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He said we’d learn the answers!” “Life is full of disappointments.” “Here’s a question you can answer.” Beauchamp pointed to the INRI plaque. “That sign above your head—it’s in all the crucifixion paintings. I’ve always wondered, what does it mean?” “‘I’m Not Returning Immediately.’”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although covetousness is not my only flaw, it seems to cause me more pain than all my other sins combined.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If nothing else, their adventure had proved that God was not about to put science out of business.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Origen cut off his own balls,” Martin informed Randall. “Prostate cancer?” “Faith.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How’re you feeling?” “I highly recommend cancer. It’s worth it just for the drugs.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve always wondered: are snake handlers in it for the religious ecstasy or merely for the ritualized masturbation?” asked Funkeldune.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To close the gap between jurisprudence and justice would require a canon of a hundred million laws.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you really think your terrestrial counterpart is living in the best of all possible worlds? Where I come from, an eighth grader would be ashamed to enter planet Earth in a junior high school science fair.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You aspired to be God’s advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God’s advocate was ipso facto my advocate. Theodicy’s a sucker’s game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity’s obligation wasn’t to worship Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe as Auschwitz...that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil’s work for him.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bitterness is not a philosophy, friend. Outrage is not an ethic. Stop counting corpses and reach a truce with the universe, or you’ll be stuck on the dung heap forever.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God was guilty. The best defense is the Manichaean heresy, which isn’t a defense at all, it’s—” “Never mind about that.” “—an indictment.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much as I hate to admit it, humanity will get along perfectly well without me. Any species that could invent the twentieth century entirely on its own doesn’t need a Prince of Darkness.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With a rush of joy, I realized that this Darwinist stance would appeal neither to secular Marxists, for whom moral lessons lay exclusively within history’s brute curriculum, nor to evangelical Christians, for whom a naturalist ethics was a contradiction in terms, nor to middle-class mystics, who detested any argument smacking of biological determinism. A philosophical position that could simultaneously antagonize the collectivist left, the God-besotted right, and the Aquarian fringe must, I decided, have a lot going for it.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Late in my senior year, I went through a crisis of doubt when my provisional girlfriend, a willowy physics major named Morgan Piziks, informed me at the end of our fourth date that anybody seriously in the question “Why?” should look not to philosophy but to the physical sciences—to cosmology, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, and the periodic table of the elements. My mind went blank. Try as I might, I could contrive no riposte. I felt instinctively that Morgan’s claim enjoyed the nontrivial virtue of being true.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My spirits rose: I could see the photon at the end of the tunnel.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, in the case of human beings this metaphysic is reversed: a person’s existence precedes his essence—he is a subject among objects. The danger, says Sartre, following Heidegger, is that he will “fall” into the world of objects, becoming ever after the prisoner of arbitrary strictures masquerading as universal principles.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea. Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Which alternative is worse, I wonder?” she said. “To deny death and thus risk never being wholly alive, or to face oblivion squarely and risk paralysis by dread?” “Nobody knows,” I said. “It’s ambiguous.” “If I ever get to be God,” she said, unleashing the grin of the person who’d invented Largesse, “my first act will be to make ambiguity illegal.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah, yes, the spiritual realm.” In those days “spiritual” was my least favorite word. It still is.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source