Novelists From The United States

"“It doesn’t derive from any sort of biology,” snapped Augustine. “It derives from sound reasoning and the Book of Genesis. ‘In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.’” “Through Adam’s shlong, our race went wrong,” replied Saperstein, jeering. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but it just won’t wash, either scientifically or theologically.”"

"“When an upright citizen hears his neighbor has met with an earthquake or a hurricane, he doesn’t stop to ask, ‘Is there a hidden harmony here?’ He rolls up his sleeves and tries to help.” “Exactly.” With an athleticism that defied his years, Noah regained his feet and climbed onto the long, taut mooring line. “If I learned one thing from the Deluge, Your Grace, it is this: a man who seals up his ark for the sake of a greater good is a man who has ceded his soul to chaos.” Slowly, cautiously, he tightrope-walked toward the rudderless vessel. “The hidden harmony defense is pornography, Bishop Augustine—pornography for priests!”"

"“I cannot respect any theory of evil that so neatly immunizes itself against empirical disconfirmation,” said Gordon. “All theodicies requiring belief in an afterlife are manifestly begging the question.”"

"Don’t get testy with me, sir. I am Augustine of Hippo Regius, discoverer of concupiscence. Between my legs hangs the axis on which will turn the brave new world of Christian antieroticism."

"You should be talking to a doctor of theology, not a Father of Lies. The distinction is subtle but real."

"I said my standard grace—“Dear Lord, we know You have good reasons for allowing thousands of children to starve in various undeveloped nations, and we thank You for concomitantly supplying our own table with these grossly superfluous portions, amen”—after which we all dug in."

"For many citizens of the Western world, this situation proved, as you might imagine, troubling—especially in the United States, where reality has never enjoyed a great deal of prestige."

"In my protracted sojourn on this planet, Mr. Candle, I have come to value three commodities above all others: good books, decent claret, and worthy opponents."

"That night Martin read the Book of Job for the first time in thirty years, discovering to his surprise it was a kind of courtroom drama, with the perverse twist that the Accused also functioned as Judge and Jury. Equally disturbing was the fact that when God went to make His case, He completely ignored Job’s main concern—justice—opting instead to intimidate him with the majesty of Creation: lions, whales, horses, hail, stars, and, ultimately, the unknowable monsters Behemoth and Leviathan. A rigged proceeding, yes, and yet Martin found it gripping. He was moved by both the force of Job’s bitterness and the caliber of his blasphemy."

"“God is out of the loop,” said Martin...“He’s left the scene”—he grimaced, realizing what he was about to say—“of His crimes.”"

"“And what are you?” “Me? I knew God was dead even before the corpse showed up.”"

"Never underestimate the value of a falsehood, friends. Never doubt the power of a lie. Blessed are the mendacious, for they shall grow wealthy beyond their wildest dreams."

"As usual, He underestimated the human potential for self-deception."

"I am the Father of Lies. Over the years, my children have done me proud. I shouldn’t play favorites, but I am especially pleased with “The meek shall inherit the earth.” Likewise, I shall always retain a soft spot in my heart for “Every cloud has a silver lining.” As for “Time heals all wounds” and “Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window”—they, too, make me gloat unconscionably."

"But just because our Creator subcontracts evil out to me, we mustn’t neglect to notice the blood on His hands."

"Love does strange things to a man’s sense of proportion, which is why—contrary to rumor—it is by no means the Devil’s least favorite emotion."

"On three occasions, Martin had wed a man to a man; twice, a woman to a woman. Although these same-sex unions scandalized many of his fellow Republicans, he performed them with equanimity, believing that the principle of laissez-faire should apply no less to the bedroom than to the marketplace."

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

"“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.’”"

"Her audacity turned him on. There was nobody quite so arousing, he decided, as a worthy opponent."

"That maxim, it’s not an argument against atheism—it’s an argument against foxholes."

"Life’s meaning doesn’t come from God! Life’s meaning comes from life!"

"“I don’t see you at Mass anymore.” “It’s like fucking, Father. You gotta be up for it.”"

"Say “rationalist” to the average New Age chucklehead, and you conjured up unappetizing images: killjoys obsessed with rules, boors fixated on order, logic-mongers skating around on the surface of things, missing the cosmic essence. Phooey. A rationalist could experience awe as readily as a shaman. But it had to be quality awe, Oliver believed, awe without illusions—the sort of awe he’d felt upon intuiting the size of the universe, or sensing the unlikeliness of his birth."

"A corpse was far too easy a thing to rationalize. Christianity had been doing it for two thousand years."

"Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God."

"It was the most portentous mission since Saul of Tarsus has suffered an epileptic seizure and called it Christianity."

"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."

"“Another boyfriend?” “A character in one of my plays. Runkleberg’s my twentieth-century Abraham. One fine morning he’s out watering his roses, and he hears God’s voice telling him to sacrifice his son.” “Does he obey?” “His wife intervenes.” “How?” “She castrates him with his hedge clippers, and he bleeds to death.”"

"“It’s tragic,” he said. “God killed them with His hurricane,” she said. “God had nothing to do with it.” “Actually I agree with you, though for reasons quite different from yours.”"

"When Cassie Fowler awoke, she was less shocked to discover that an afterlife existed than to find that she, of all people, had been admitted to it. Her entire adulthood, it seemed, year after year of spiting the Almighty and saluting the Enlightenment, had come to nothing. She’d been saved, raptured, immortalized. Shit. The situation spoke badly of her and worse of eternity. What heaven worthy of the name would accept so ardent an unbeliever as she?"

"Somehow his grandfather had wrought an honorable and glamorous life from the sea. But that era was gone. The system was dying. Advising a young man to join the United States Merchant Marine was like advising him to go into vaudeville."

"“What’s theodicy?” asked Anthony. “Hard to explain.” “Sounds like idiocy.” “Much of it is.”"

"To Thomas’s eye, Union Square combined the exoticism of The Arabian Nights with the bedrock banality of American commerce, as if a medieval Persian bazaar had been transplanted to the twentieth century and taken over by Wal-Mart."

"—Then there is the final possibility, my favorite. —Yes? —The final possibility is that I’m God. —You’re God? —Just a theory, but the data are provocative. I mean, look at me. Faceless, shapeless, holey, undifferentiated, Jewish, inscrutable...and a hermaphrodite to boot. Years ago, I told you sponges cannot be fatally dismembered, for each part quickly becomes the whole. To wit, I am both immortal and infinite. —You’re God? You’re God herself? You? —The data are provocative. —God is a sponge? A sponge? There’s not much comfort in that. —Agreed. —Sponges can’t help us. —Neither can God, as far as I can tell. I’d be happy to see some contrary data."

"There are none so blind as those who see angels...None so deaf as those who hear gods."

"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."

"“You see God as an engineer?” asked Urpastor Phelps. “I don’t see God as anything at all.” “An engineer, you said. An incompetent engineer.” “Incompetent, perfect, who knows? God is whatever we agree to pretend God is. God is our image of God.”"

"The Sermon on the Mount—it never ends for you, does it? If somebody kicks your right buttock, turn the other cheek."

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

"“You’re not very religious, are you?” said Irene. “I’m more into gravity.”"

"The wonders of nature, she learned, from wing of bee to sonar of bat to eyeball of baby, were not so much perfect machines as adequate contraptions. If nature bespoke a mind, it was a confused and inchoate one, a mind incapable of locating the optic nerve on the correct side of the retina, a mind unable to accomplish much of anything without resort to jerry-building and extinction."

"“The universe,” says Wyvern, “is a Ph. D. thesis that God was unable to successfully defend.”"

"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."

"Hell was not perfect, but it was paradise compared with New Jersey."

"“Don’t believe everything you hear about hell. Next time you run into some anti-hell propaganda, consider the source.” “You inflict eternal punishment on people,” Julie countered. “Merely because it’s our job. And remember, we persecute only the guilty, which puts us one up on most other institutions.”"

"Better a citizen in hell than a slave in New Jersey."

"Although Bix Constantine disbelieved in hell as intensely as he did in heaven, he knew what the place would be like. Hell, for Bix, was jealousy. It was failed journalists seeing their enemies receive Pulitzer Prizes. It was compulsive gamblers seeing jackpots gush from adjacent players’ slot machines and sex-starved young men seeing their friends piled high with naked cheerleaders."

"The problem is, only a few people get to be scientists. You see the dilemma? Given the choice between a truth they can appreciate and a lie they can live, most people will take you-know-what."

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