Parke Godwin

"Smart eats, stupid starves."

"True believers coming to the fore with the same old theme—don’t you make out you’re better than us—defining a narrow God by what they themselves hated and feared."

"Hard men and women, from Barion’s firsthand recollection: not always thinking of God but seeing Him hard as themselves when they did. Their descendants much the same, not as hard but needing that peculiarly American form of religious ecstasy blended of poverty, ignorance, degenerated mysticism, collected injuries and the need for vengeance."

"Woody had more talent than drive, but a musician, even a poor one, was preferable to a fanatic. He could only assault the ear."

"“If you are in trouble, so am I. Two rowers in a sinking lifeboat telling each other ‘I told you so’ doesn’t keep either from drowning.”"

"Countries are just like women. Sooner or later everyone loses their cherry and gets to be just another broad on the block."

"Coyle knew to its core the essence of Charity Stovall, who had lived her twenty years in the lower echelons of Christian belief, a lurid topography with no middle ground. Her theology was banal but rendered in full color, a Caucasian Green Pastures at one end, smoke, fire, pain—the whole Faustian, Exorcist claptrap at the other."

"Nemesis, come! And you unfeeling stars, I hurl defiance for reply, and cast into the balance for the world to see my soul ’gainst thy insensate cruelty."

"Honor thy stereotypes, the authors of thy thinking, for without them, thou wouldst have to see."

"“Got no time for games,” Charity told the dog. “Hope you don’t bite.” “Not at all. The hound yawned to his ears. But beware the owner. He thinks.”"

"I will not comment on your accent. Similes founder, metaphors fail."

"You haven’t changed for hundreds of years, and your sins, such as they are, have not grown in complexity. A moment of yes in a lifetime of thou shalt not. Certain punishment out of a steaming Protestant imagination."

"Hell might be a strain, she concluded, but you couldn’t beat it for the new and different or the interesting men."

"“One can think,” Jake mused over the chessboard. “If thought is desirable. For me it was a curse, an obsession, like chess. Always the intellectual yearning to be the man of action. To be, like Brutus, a fulcrum of history. That was denied me until one day when I—acted. I’ll never know whether I was right at the wrong time for my own sake or wrong at the right time for the sake of history.”"

"“You must have been an evangelical.” “Tabernacle of the Born Again Savior,” Charity owned with wistful pride. “Not that it helped a whole lot.” “Indeed.” Jake sank again in his chair. “Tabernacle of the…the more shriveled the existence, the more elaborate the credentials. Virtue measured by what you wouldn’t do, at least under scrutiny, and others judged for what they would and got caught at. You don’t want Grace, Miss Stovall. You want to get even.”"

"Religion is what you sing on Sunday, Miss Stovall. Your true faith is what you want all week."

"Was that what all my praying was about? “Lord Amighty, no wonder I am damned.” “No, Miss Stovall. Love and hell are alike in that respect; they are what you bring to them. The script is yours; only the props are furnished.”"

"“We’re here with Judas Iscariot on the fringe of the delirious demonstration for Roy Stride. Judas, can you comment on the meteoric rise of Stride and the White Paladins?” Judas reached through the cab window and fetched his cap. “I’d say the hopeless schmucks have found the kind of government they deserve. Always do.”"

"Judas shrugged. “He’s taking their own fear, frustration and anger and selling it back to them with a new ribbon around it. Easy answers, easy targets: out with the Jews and blacks, down with the intellectuals, which means anyone who’s better off or disagrees with them. Slogans, marching bands and the promise of blood. How can he miss?”"

"Look, these clowns need a messiah because the truth of the world always goes down easier with a few miracles and a lot of blood. It’s a very old game, the rules don’t change. I’d say Stride is a flaming, fourteen-karat folk hero. Look at this crowd; you’re not talking about contented, mature people. You ever see a happy man who needed to conquer the world?"

"Judas/Jake got into the cab and and drove out of shot. “So that’s the evilest man in the whole world ever.” Charity pondered the screen. She dunked a strawberry in champagne. “Talks mean about folks.” “With considerable authority,” Simnel said. “A true believer at one time who would do anything to make need into truth. Now he watches the rest of them doing the same thing over and over again one way or another.”"

"The smaller the man, the larger his power fantasies."

"If respectability is the daughter of morality, her jealous sister is blackmail."

"Roy’s a fuck-up like Hitler. What’s the opposite of fail-safe? Success-safe. These turkeys have got to lose because most of their thinking is off the wall to begin with. Think about it: there’s Adolf rearranging Europe like a hyperactive housewife, shrewd as they come, and still getting his horoscope done every goddamned day, which is like seriously figuring Santa Claus into the national budget. These people are not coming from common sense; they simply can’t think big."

"Lengthy memos were always coming down from somewhere to be read, initialed and passed on. Never less than ten single-spaced pages, they boiled down to the need for efficiency and cutting paperwork."

"Hell, there’s no mystery between men and women, except why some poor damn fool like me ain’t figured that out yet."

"Sorlij tried to imagine a place less organized than this. The concept was a challenge."

"Your world is a sewer, Mr. Stride. One can almost absolve you for being one of its diseases."

"Roy’s cry of horror filled of the universe, more horrible for the indifferent silence that swallowed it up."

"“But what’s it mean,” Roy cried, agonized. “What is it for?” “Not for anything. It exists.”"

"Paranoia, the common cold of neurosis. The paranoiac, perceiving all external stimuli as threat, needs to see his enemies, not merely sense their external presence. Being imaginary, these threats must be fleshed out to visible targets, the more clearly defined the better."

"Subconsciously aware of the fragility of his artificial reality, the paranoiac must ever reinforce its defenses with more and more elaborate rationale. His virtues must be defined, his enemies painted in primary colors. The basic motive of fear is raised to mystic proportion; a cause, uniform, a symbol. He proclaims his purposes one with God’s. “No—” The central infection inflames and eventually mortifies the entire psyche until any healthy stimulus becomes alien."

"Infantile, needing to be the center and reason for creation, the less educated or advantaged subject needs a distorted miraculous theology to support a perilous existence, externally and constantly threatened as it is by “them.”"

"It wasn’t your usual vacation. But what’s so bad, Char? I’ve seen heaven and you’ve seen hell, and they’re just what? Common sense, funny and horrible with a lot of bullshit thrown in, just like the six o’clock news."

"The therapists will have a field day and we’ll probably lose hordes to schizophrenia. But cry all they want, stomp around, kick furniture, the human race will get rid of their fairy-tale notions of good, evil and the cosmos, and by God—by Me, I guess—they will grow the hell up."