Quotes by Mary Doria Russell

I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what theyve learned, Id find quarks and God just like they did.

There are times...when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all its unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to its higher truth....When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.

...trust in God could impose an additional burden on good people slammed to their knees by some senseless tragedy. An atheist might be no less staggered by such an event, but nonbelievers often experienced a kind of calm acceptance: shit happens, and this particular shit happened to them. It could be more difficult for a person of faith to get to his feet precisely because he had to reconcile Gods love and care with the stupid, brutal fact that something irreversibly terrible had happened.

Hes not a bad guy, John. Its human nature. He wanted it to be some mistake I made that he wouldnt have made, some flaw in me that he didnt share, so he could believe it wouldnt have happened to him. But it wasnt my fault. It was either blind, dumb, stupid luck from start to finish, in which case, we are all in the wrong business gentleman, or it was a God I cannot worship.

Writing my own novels in the 90s...I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor.

we all make vows, Jimmy. And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever, she said. Most of us stand up and vow to love, honor and cherish someone. And we truly mean it, at the time. But two or twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement. You and George didnt go back on your promises. She laughed. Lemme tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men. She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, Theyve all been named George Edwards but, believe me, the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole lot different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt. Oh, there are continuities. He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and - well, the rest is none of your business. But people change, he said quietly. Precisely. People change. Cultures change. Empires rise and fall. Shit. Geology changes! Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and weve had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people. She flopped back against her chair. Which is why vows are such a tricky business. Because nothing stays the same forever. Okay. Okay! Im figuring something out now. She sat up straight, eyes focused somewhere outside the room, and Jimmy realized that even Anne didnt have all the answers and that was either the most comforting thing hed learned in a long time or the most discouraging. Maybe because so few of us would be able to give up something so fundamental for something so abstract, we protect ourselves from the nobility of a priests vows by jeering at him when he cant live up to them, always and forever. She shivered and slumped suddenly, But, Jimmy! What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those arent human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.

Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.

When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty.

Shall I tell you why young men love war? . . . In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one question with one right answer. . . . Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.

In the beginning, Scripture taught, there was the Word, and Danny would come to believe that the two great gifts his God had given to the species He loved were time, which divides experience, and language, which binds the past to the future.

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?

For he had never heard anything like it--did not know such music existed in the world--and it was hard to believe that a man he knew could play it with his own two hands. There were parts of it like birdsong, and parts like rolling thunder and hard rain, and parts that glittered like fresh snow when the sun comes out and it’s so cold the air takes your breath away. And parts were like a dust devil spinning past, or a cyclone on the horizon, and all of it cried out for words that he had only read in books and had never said aloud.

She was alone and destitute in a world of pointless carnage. By an eight-hundred-year-old Sepahrdic tradition she ad been since the age of twelve and a half bogeret lreshut nafsha--an adult wit authority over her own soul. The Torah taught, Choose life. And so, rather than die of pride, Sofia Mendes sold what she had to sell, and she survived.

His greatest satisfaction as a priest was to grant absolution, to help people forgive themselves for not being perfect, make amends, and get on with life.

Love is a debt, she thought. When the bill comes, you pay in grief.

After all, Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who had killed and whored and made a thorough mess of his soul, said you could judge prayer worthwhile simply if you could act more decently, think more clearly afterward. As D.W. once told him, “Son, sometimes it’s enough just to act less like a shithead.

And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes.

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: its not just me. (15)

Wyatt Earp had been born, and born again, and now there would be a third life, for the iron fist that had seized his soul in childhood had lost its grip at last. The long struggle for control was over, and in its place, he found a wordless acceptance of a truth hed always known. He was bred to this anger. It had been in him since the cradle. Hed never bullied neighbors or beaten a horse. Hed never punched the front teeth out of a six-year-olds mouth or hit a woman until she begged. But he was no better than his father, and never had been. He was far, far worse.

The poor you will always have with you, Jesus said. A warning, Emilio wondered, or an indictment?