My friends in the nouveau paganism camp accuse me of quaintness: Bible thumpers are straw men, so why bother?...My answer is that straw men, once set… - James 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.

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

I am what I am. I am Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan, Heaven and Hiroshima, Arcadia and Auschwitz." Smiling devilishly, Sarkos lumbered up to Lovett. "Get it, fat boy? God is a duality. Dr. Jehovah and Mr. Hyde." He lobbed the bottle cap into his mouth and chewed. "Allow me to tell you a bedtime story. It's called 'The Day the Gas Chambers Malfunctioned at Auschwitz.' On second thought, why bother? You know the plot—the title gives it away—I'm surprised Braverman and Kelvin left it out of their overblown epic. Can you imagine how it feels to be a seven-year-old Jewish child, standing in line with hundreds of other Jewish children, waiting your turn to be thrown alive onto an open fire?" Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. "Don't you see? It's the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.