Fiction Authors From The United States

"But in the 1870s, weirdness was in the air."

"Now some philosophers, and I’m not mentioning any names—mostly because I can’t pronounce them—try to hide the fact that they feel their way to the Big Answers just like the rest of us do. They spin out all kinds of fancy, impersonal reasons for coming to their conclusions, but the way they really got there is they trusted their gut in the first place, just like the rest of us. But because they wanted an impressive philosophy that matched what they felt in their guts, they constructed it out of their heads. And here’s where they got a little sneaky, for my money: they kinda cherry-picked the universe for evidence that backed up what their gut told them to start with, and they ignored anything that didn’t jibe with it."

"The excuse of “God made me do it”—as both a principle of action and an excuse for it—declined after Genghis, replaced by “the devil made me do it.” In both cases, personal moral responsibility was nullified, so it was just a hop, skip, and jump to “My unconscious drives made me do it,” a.k.a. the insanity defense. What is striking about all three Über-motivators is that they almost exclusively make us do criminal acts. As one comedian quipped, “Have you ever heard anyone cry, ‘God made me trim the hedges!’”"

"The monitor confirmed cardiac arrest as an elderly man suddenly lost consciousness. After about twenty seconds of resuscitation, he came to. Explaining to him that his heart had momentarily stopped, the doctor asked if he remembered anything unusual during that time. “I saw a bright light,” he said, “and in front of me a man dressed in white. Excitedly, the doctor asked if he could describe the figure. “Sure, Doc,” he replied. “It was you.”"

"There are complications. The first is, how can we be sure what God really thinks? Fundamentalists have that one covered: Scripture says so. But how did the people in Scripture know the signals they were getting were really from God? Abraham thought he was called by God to sacrifice his son on the altar. Abraham figures, “If God says so, I’d better do it.” Our first philosophical query to Abraham is, “What around you, nuts? You hear ‘God” tell you to do a crazy thing, and you don’t even ask for identification?”"

"Cum hoc and post hoc arguments so much of their appeal to our fanciful/poetic sides, which, from a strict philosopher’s point of view, are our pudding-headed sides."

"Any political commentator worthy of having his own program on Fox News knows that when it comes to hiding the truth, burial is a nifty option. Why risk a blatant, in-your-face fib when a questionable assumption buried in a seemingly logical argument might slip right by the listener?"

"The bottom line is that the values we think are timeless and absolute are really in constant historical flux relative to who has power and how it gets used."

"How does conventional wisdom become conventional? As Stewart informs us, it usually starts with talking points. Party A decides how it wants us to think about the candidates of Party B and then sets out to get their unflattering labels repeated so often in the media that they stick in our minds. The media cooperate because it gives them a hook for their stories. And we, the public, are only too glad to latch onto these labels, because they are so catchy. And more significantly, it’s way easier than thinking."

"Lost in discussions of séances is any consideration for the dead respondents. Why do they have to appear on demand? Might they not have busy schedules too? Aren’t they at least entitled to caller ID?"

"A perennial favorite hidden assumption is that something is morally right because it is “natural,” the way Mother Nature intended it."

"The agnostic is one step short of an atheist, who considers the case against the existence of God closed. If both of them came across a burning bush saying, “I am that I am,” the agnostic would start looking for the hidden tape recorder, but the atheist would just shrug and reach for his marshmallows."

"Many of these fallacies, formal and informal, were identified by Aristotle nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. Has that stopped politicians from using them? On the contrary, they’ve treated them as formal and informal strategies!"

"One criterion to bear in mind when choosing a religion is where its particular afterlife is being held."

"In theology, schisms have opened over such pressing issues as, “Does the Spirit proceed from the Father or from the Father and the Son?” The layperson clearly needs a simple guide to theological differences and, thank God, the comedians are always willing to oblige."

"A fundamental problem with arguments from analogy is the assumption that, because some aspects of A are similar to B, other aspects of A are similar to B. It ain’t necessarily so."

"Another problem with following Divine Law is interpretation. What exactly qualifies as honoring thy father and mother?"

"Another way to differentiate denominations is according to what behavior qualifies someone for a divine dressing-down. For Catholics, it’s missing Mass. For Baptists, it’s dancing. For Episcopalians, it’s eating your salad with your dessert fork."

"It is often said that all of life is high school—over and over again. But we beg to differ, at least when it comes to political rhetoric, where a good part of life is grade school."

"The clear implication of the term is that this self-evidence is evident to everyone who is paying attention. But you don’t need to be an epistemologist to realize that one person’s “self evident” is another person’s “huh??” Our local shaman finds it self-evident that there are multicolored pixies fluttering around our heads. We are willing to accept that said pixies are evident to his self; they just don’t happen to be evident to ours."

"Either do the fucking thing and shut the fuck up, or fucking just shut the fuck up."

"You're a smart boy. Or if you're not, you ought to be."

"“You're an idiot,” Lucy said. “Just ’cause you don’t understand them don’t mean they’re out to get you.”"

"He’s not the first man I'd like to kill down here, but I was willing to work him onto the list."

"Sometimes, everyone is right. Not always and not even usually, but once in a while, everyone is right."

"Her lack of interest might have been interpreted as a lack of caring, but it was only a side effect of permanent exhaustion."

"“What was it like?” Zeke asked, changing the subject as much as he was willing to. “Fighting in the war, I mean?” He grumbled, “It was war, you dumb kid. Everybody I liked got killed, and most of the folks I'd just as soon have shot made it out with medals on their chests. It wasn’t fair and it sure as hell wasn’t any fun. And Jesus knows it’s been going on way too long.”"

"Taravangian did not believe in any religion, for they were unwieldy things, designed to fill gaps in human understanding with nonsensical explanations, allowing people to sleep well at night, granting them a false sense of comfort and control and preventing them from stretching further for true understanding."

"“That guy,” a girl’s voice said, “is creepy.”… “I mean, old men are all creepy, Lift said. “Seriously. All wrinkly and ‘Hey, want some sweets?’ and ‘Oh, listen to this boring story.’ I’m on to them. They can act nice all they want, but nobody gets old without ruining a whole buncha lives.”"

"Fine? All right? Now leave me alone. You’re stinking up the place with an air of contented idiocy."

"Every army needed someone to run at the front and soak up arrows."

"“Why, Jasnah? Why have you always denied me?” “Other than the fact that you are a detestable buffoon who achieves only the lowest level of mediocrity, as it is the best your limited mind can imagine? I can’t possibly think of a reason.”"

"It was a frantic, insane brawl for power."

"Most cities lived on the very edge of civilization. Everyone talked about towns and villages out in the middle of nowhere as if they were uncivilized, but she’d found people in those places pleasant, even-tempered, and comfortable with their quieter way of life. Not in cities. Cities balanced on the edge of sustainability, always one step from starvation. When you pressed so may people together, their cultures, ideas, and stenches rubbed off on one another. The results wasn’t civilization. It was contained chaos, pressurized, bottled up so it couldn’t escape."

"Who would have thought that bearing an ancient, divine mantle of power and honor would involve so many meetings?"

"You are a man with complicated beliefs, who does not accept everything you are told. You decide how you are defined. Don’t surrender that to them. They will gleefully take the chance to define you, if you allow it."

"In my painful experience, the truth may be simple, but it is rarely easy."

"I’d hoped…I’d hoped you could tell me, give me an absolute right. For once, I’d like my moral code not to come with a list of exceptions at the end."

"Morality is not a thing you can simply doff to put on the helm of battle, then put back on when you’re done with the slaughter."

"But you should try to understand what they want out of life, and respect that, rather than projecting onto them what you think they should want out of life."

"Jasnah couldn’t help but smile. For over a decade, she’d dreamed of uniting the best minds of the kingdom in a coordinated effort. She’d been ignored; all anyone had wanted to discuss was her lack of belief in their god. Well, they were focused now. Turned out the end of the world had to actually arrive before people would take it seriously."

"They were too theatrical—and there were too many of them—for all to be truly deranged. This was a fad. A way of dealing with unexpected events and giving some shape to lives that had been turned upside down. That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. A group of people all trying to impress one another was always more dangerous than the lone psychopath."

"“They all stretched farther and farther until they collapsed. In all the history of mankind, has any conqueror decided they had enough? Has any man just said, ‘This is good. This is what I wanted,’ and gone home?”"

"But merely being tradition does not make some thing worthy, Kadash. We can’t just assume that because some thing is old it is right."

"“Morality is an axis that doesn’t interest us,” Mraize said calmly. “Only loyalty and power are relevant, for morality is as ephemeral as the changing weather. It depends upon the angle from which you view it.”"

"Oh, Adolin, Shallan thought. He’d arrived at a theory he liked, and now wouldn’t let it go. It was a common mistake warned of in her scientific books."

"Dalinar bowed his head for a prayer. Let me be stronger than those who would kill me. Simple and to the point, the kind he figured the Almighty would prefer."

"Curious, how quickly tyrants grow religious. It must that be convenient to tell yourself that your murders belong to the Almighty instead."

"He needed more than vague explanations and abstract ideas—but those were the very soul of art. If you could explain something perfectly, then you’d never need art. That was the difference between a table and a beautiful woodcutting. You could explain the table: its purpose, its shape, its nature. The woodcutting you simply had to experience."

"She felt like drawing this scene, but knew it was the type of moment she couldn’t capture on a page. It wasn’t about content or composition, but the pleasure of living. The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate."