Mary Doria Russell Quotes

The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances, is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.

You know how people say, Don't borrow trouble? Well, said Morgan, I guess it's the opposite of that. Doc is borrowing happiness.

"Bein' born is craps," he decided. He glanced at Morg and let loose that sly, lopsided smile of his. "How we live is poker."

Abandon a dachshund and upon your return, you may well be confronted with a small token of her displeasure. This, for the dachshund, is an undignified but necessary form of training. Eventually, you will learn your lesson, which is to take you with her everywhere. When you have finally accepted this, you will be generously rewarded for your good behavior by a jaunty, joyful companion.

The sign of a good decision is the multiplicity of reasons for it.

"It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne’s last night and to receive no plain answers," he said. "Perhaps this is because we can’t understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable."

I ain't movin' to Arizona! Dammit, there is nothin' there but gravel and scorpions.

On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes' walk across St. Peter's Square from the Vatican.

Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future.

No one who does not live with constant pain can imagine the toll it takes. The way it grinds you down. The sheer damnable tedium of it.

He ain't big and he ain't strong, but that boy's got a by-God streak of fight in him. And he was going to need it.

As many as thirty or as few as ten years later, lying exhausted and still, eyes open in the dark long after the three suns of Rakhat had set, no longer bleeding, past the vomiting, enough beyond the shock to think again, it would occur to Emilio Sandoz to wonder if perhaps that day int he Sudan was really only part of the setup for a punchline a life-time in the making. It was an odd thought, under the circumstances. He understood that, even at the time. But thinking it, he realized with appalling clarity that on his journey of discovery as a Jesuit, he had not merely been the first human being to set foot on Rhakhat, had not simply explored parts of its largest continent and learned two of its languages and loved some of its people. He had also discovered the outermost limit of faith and, in doing so had located the exact boundary of despair. It was at that moment that he learned, truly, to fear God.

They strolled toward town, stopping now and then to let him catch his breath and to gaze upward, for the west Kansas sky is black velvet on clear, cool December nights, and the Milky Way is strung across it like the diamond necklace of a crooked banker's mistress.

In Texas, rocks are considered an adequate weaponry during schoolyard scuffles. Dallas children carry a brace of loaded pistols, a concealed Derringer, and a 6 inch Toadsticker in one boot. That's the girls of course. Boys bring howitzers to class.

"How long ago did she die, Wyatt?" Morgan pressed. "Is it nine years now?"
"Eight," Wyatt said, halfway between stubborn and sad. "I promised to love her all my life, Morg. I meant to keep my word."
That shut Morgan up, but Doc's eyes opened and he gazed at Wyatt for a long time. "What?" Wyatt asked.
"That is your ghost life, Wyatt," Doc told him, and closed his eyes again. "That is the life you might have had. This is the life you've got."