141 quotes
The man was fat. His belly arrived like an advance guard, heralding the bulk to come, huge shoulders, a surplus chin. His white cassock had settled over his body like a tarpaulin dropped on a blimp.
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
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.
Blameless in Abaddon (1996)
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.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Like all good friends, they hated seeing their relationship lose its emotional innocence, its chastity of good will, and now that the thing was lost, now that searing statements had changed hands and left scars, neither looked forward to the future.
The Wine of Violence (1981)
JOB. And now it’s time...
FRANNY. To curse God...
JOB. And live.
Bible Stories for Adults (1996)
“I knew this guy one, a demac on the Amoco Cádiz, dying of bone cancer. You know what he said? ‘When they give you morphine like there’s no tomorrow, there isn’t.’”
Towing Jehovah (1994)
Like most visionaries, The Teller saw the distant future with optical-glass clarity, the intermediate future with beeswax clarity, and the immediate future with the clarity of dark glasses dipped in tar.
The Wine of Violence (1981)
Do you really think your terrestrial counterpart is living in the best of all possible worlds? Where I come from, an eighth grader would be ashamed to enter planet Earth in a junior high school science fair.
Blameless in Abaddon (1996)
“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.”
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
For moral reasons, the young Reverend Peter Sparrow declined to join the Saturday night gatherings of the Erebus Poker Club. Gambling, he knew, was Satan’s third favorite pastime, after sex and ecumenicalism.
This Is the Way the World Ends (1986)
“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.”
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
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.
Towing Jehovah (1994)
Her libido blazed to life. She smiled, impressed by the party-crashing shamelessness of sex, its willingness to show up anywhere—a funeral, a sermon, a final farewell. This was the way to go out, all right, thumbing your labia at the cosmos.
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
“I’m really interested in this stuff.” Julie rubbed a carton labeled ELEMENTARY PARTICLES.
“Physics?”
“Physics, biology, stars, everything.”
Howard said, “Good for you. These days most people prefer to impoverish their minds with mysticism.”
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
He was a devout believer in the second chance. To the man who asked, “What’s the point of closing the barn door after the horse has been stolen?” Murray would answer, “The point is that the door is now closed.”
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
Neither Dexter nor I knew the first thing about running a small business. We were entrepreneurs the way Abbott and Costello were watercolorists. And so naturally it came to pass that Pieces of Mind was a hands-down, thumbs-up, flat-out success.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)
Francis had always been ecumenical in his atheism. He was as prepared to disbelieve in this Tolca character as he was to disbelieve in Yahweh, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, or any of the other words for what his father used to call “forcing yourself to misperceive the obvious.”
The Wine of Violence (1981)
“Love Jesus, embrace your inner storm trooper, and leave the planet a more miserable place than you found it—that’s Christian nihilism in a nutshell,” said Whip Hemsoth. “If there’s a better path to fulfilling your purpose and engorging your wedding member, I haven’t found it.”
Only Ten More Shopping Days Until Ragnarök (2016)
What most people don’t realize is that something unprecedented has entered the world. Bang—science—and suddenly a proposition is true because it’s true, Julie, not because its adherents have the biggest churches or the grandest inquisitors or the most weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
Only Begotten Daughter (1990)
As Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us, in the case of human beings this metaphysic is reversed: a person’s existence precedes his essence—he is a subject among objects. The danger, says Sartre, following Heidegger, is that he will “fall” into the world of objects, becoming ever after the prisoner of arbitrary strictures masquerading as universal principles.
The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008)