James Morrow Quotes

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

Children, being close to the ground, have a special rapport with insects.

Under the midnight sun, despair acquires the intensity of sex, insomnia the vehemence of art.

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.

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.

Although covetousness is not my only flaw, it seems to cause me more pain than all my other sins combined.

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.

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.

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

It's an old story, perhaps the oldest on earth," Joan said. "The sky rumbles, the clouds congeal, the sun spasms. Is that a saint I see on high? An angel? The Lord God Jehovah himself? Now a holy voice booms down, instructing the poor prophet to grab a sword and thrust it into a fellow human, or perhaps a hundred fellow humans, or even a million if the cause is sufficiently sacred. The prophet never talks back. The tradition existed before me. It flourishes to this day. The sword, the blood, the freshly created corpses littering the battlefield, exuding the stink of epiphany.

If nothing else, their adventure had proved that God was not about to put science out of business.

As with the rest of Phoebe’s species, Julie must not let her become dependent upon supernatural solutions, trading one addiction for another.

Those who can kill themselves do, and those who can’t, teach philosophy.

As with all things political, the issue was power.

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.