James Morrow Quotes

It was not a question of regressive old ideas versus enlightened new ideas, but of reasonable caution versus arrogant caprice.

It is far more arrogant to profess intuitive knowledge of the sacred than scientific knowledge of the tangible.

Francis’s office did not come with a videophone; at times he was surprised that his office came with a floor.

In physical pursuits Luli was considerably less passionate. Her idea of a good time in bed was breakfast.

Luli turned out to be uncompromising and brilliant. She could prosecute honey before a jury of bears and win.

The world’s odd tolerance of fighting cropped up again and again in Francis’s study of history, particularly ancient history. On Earth, where his remotest forebears lived, a person could be indisputably responsible for the deaths of thousands and still go down in the history books as some sort of great hero. This was before Francis understood the biological inevitability of violence, so he was bewildered. Why, he wanted to know, were the names of Samson, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Ulysses S. Grant, and Julius Caesar not obscenities, spoken after dark in whispers of revulsion and shame? The same teachers who couldn’t bring themselves to say shitbrain or ortwaddle openly discussed Alexander the Great.
He never found anyone who had the answer. Until he got to Planet Carlotta, he never even found anyone who had the question.

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

Smugness kills all utopias.

People found ever more ingenious ways to hate each other.

The new homeland bulged with the sort of free-for-the-grabbing bounty that invites greed, envy, exploitation, profiteering, and politics.

Burne was tough. Burne practiced archeology, the most inconvenient of the sciences.

Let’s just hope that gravity isn’t as heavy as it used to be...

My own preliminary diagnosis is that I am out of my skull and getting farther from its vicinity every day.

JOB. And now it’s time...
FRANNY. To curse God...
JOB. And live.

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?