James K. Morrow Quotes

75 Sourced Quotes

There are none so blind as those who see angels... None so deaf as those who hear gods.

James K. Morrow
What I love about fiction is the way this form of expression allows an author to wrestle an idea to the ground, as opposed to the bumper-sticker dialectics that pass for political and philosophical discourse in most sectors of our culture. In the age of mass communication, we need the quiet, contemplative and often ambiguous medium of the novel more than ever.

James K. Morrow
I wish more English teachers helped their students engage the classics at the level of raw delight, instead of putting them on the scent of symbols. A novel is not a cryptogram.

James K. Morrow
Recent biblical exegesis by Anthem's newest organization, Hermeneutics Unlimited, had established beyond doubt that Jesus Christ was adamantly opposed to universal health-care insurance, class-action lawsuits, and corporate whistleblowers. Several prominent postrationalist theologians had successfully exposed public education for the misguided Marxist boondoggle it was, while a majority in Congress now advocated replacing the secular school system with private academies committed to sparing children the bad news that Charles Darwin had brought back from the Galápagos Islands.

James K. Morrow
—Then there is the final possibility, my favorite.
—Yes?
—The final possibility is that I'm God.
—You're God?
—Just a theory, but the data are provocative. I mean, look at me. Faceless, shapeless, holey, undifferentiated, Jewish, inscrutable... and a hermaphrodite to boot. Years ago, I told you sponges cannot be fatally dismembered, for each part quickly becomes the whole. To wit, I am both immortal and infinite.
—You're God? You're God herself? You?
—The data are provocative.
—God is a sponge? A sponge? There's not much comfort in that.
—Agreed.
—Sponges can't help us.
—Neither can God, as far as I can tell. I'd be happy to see some contrary data.

James K. Morrow
Your disciples will expect something even grander from you. They'll want you to become a deity.
She snickered and said, I'm not ruling out that possibility.
What sort of deity? A hamadryad? Plato's demiurge? The Creator God of Judeo-Christian revelation?
That job's already taken, she said.
But you could do it better, I said.
When it comes to the physics, no, but in other areas—you're right.

James K. Morrow
Is there anything quite so ludicrous as two intellectuals grappling in a philosophy-department parking lot? Each of us wanted to pummel the other to a pulp, but neither knew how to go about it.

James K. Morrow
It must have been hard converting your elders in the Pentagon to this view.
Ever try stuffing a melted marshmallow up a wildcat's ass? It can be done, but you have to like your job.

James K. Morrow
Right before bed, I spend twenty minutes in this place. Then I can sleep.
You mean you simply sit here, staring at everybody's pain? All you do is look at it?
Uh-huh. Just like God.

James K. Morrow
I shall never cease to marvel at the clarity of stars when viewed from midocean, each as sharp and bright as the laser pointer God uses when lecturing the angels on evolution.

James K. Morrow
A golden age, Londa calls it. She hopes it will return.
Golden ages rarely return, I said especially if they never existed.

James K. Morrow
Don't believe everything you hear about hell. Next time you run into some anti-hell propaganda, consider the source.
You inflict eternal punishment on people, Julie countered.
Merely because it's our job. And remember, we persecute only the guilty, which puts us one up on most other institutions.

James K. Morrow
Hell was not perfect, but it was paradise compared with New Jersey.

James K. Morrow
Dexter Padula, a member of that ubiquitous academic breed, the professional graduate student, forever revising his dissertation while eyeing external reality with the anxious demeanor of a nursing infant struggling to imagine life beyond the tit.

James K. Morrow
I've been good, I've been bad—nothing gets her attention. What am I supposed to do, sacrifice a goat?
Perhaps you should start a religion. You know—reveal your mother to the world.
How can I reveal her when I don't know what she's like?
Use your imagination. Everybody else does.

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

James K. Morrow
What really got under Londa's skin, I soon learned, was not the Messiah's sermon per se but the discontinuity between its sublime directives and the ignominious course of Western history, a spectacle that, the more we thought about it, increasingly struck Londa and me as largely a fancy-dress danse macabre, Titus Andronicus on a hemispheric and ultimately global scale, though I hastened to point out that the chronicles of other civilizations were likewise awash in blood. What had gone wrong? She wanted to know. When and why had the teachings of Jesus Christ become an optional component of Christianity?

James K. Morrow
Maybe I'll end up on the fun side of her pants some day.

James K. Morrow
Those who can kill themselves do, and those who can't, teach philosophy.

James K. Morrow
You're not very religious, are you? said Irene.
I'm more into gravity.

James K. Morrow
Babies are like kittens, Julie, they grow into something much more sinister.

James K. Morrow
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.

James K. Morrow
Fair are the daughters of men, and fairest are those who read. Is there any creature more desirable than a damsel in intellectual distress?

James K. Morrow
Ah, yes, the spiritual realm. In those days spiritual was my least favorite word. It still is.

James K. Morrow
Actually, the answer's quite simple. Two red eyes floated in the mist.
Really? Tell me. Why does God allow evil?
The red eyes vanished, leaving only the lantern and the night. Because power corrupts, said Wyvern's disembodied voice. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

James K. Morrow
Better a citizen in hell than a slave in New Jersey.

James K. Morrow
To George, Overwhite still seemed like a windbag, but he was obviously a resourceful and intelligent one, a windbag woven of the finest material.

James K. Morrow
Gravestones, he knew, were educational media, teaching that life has limits: don't set your sights too high.

James K. Morrow
If Western Europe and the United States committed seven billion dollars annually to the cause of clean drinking water worldwide, that investment would save four thousand lives a day...
Seven billion dollars. That's less than what Europeans spend each year for perfume and Americans for cosmetic surgery. Before he went to the gallows, Enoch Anthem spoke often about Christ turning water into wine, but he never once implored Christendom to turn perfume into water.

James K. Morrow
You wouldn't like him. Major fanatic. Confuses migraine headaches with God.

James K. Morrow