Quotes by Mary Doria Russell

Once I told Ha�anala about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. . . . I told her how Abraham bargained with God for the lives of ten righteous men who might have lived there. She said to me, �Abraham should have taken the babies from the cities. The babies were innocent.�

Gods got a lot of explaining to do. Of course, God never explains. When life breaks your heart, youre just supposed to pick up the pieces and start all over, I guess.

My experience is that many things are not as bad as I thought they would be.

Emilio was certainly within his rights not to reveal the sordid details of his childhood even to his friends. Or perhaps especially to his friends, whose good opinion of him, he might feel, would not survive the revelations.

The new fashions sold in departmentstores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see.They’d been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittancein terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industrythat exploited its desperately poor workers so heartlessly.And if that wasn’t enough to keep me out of stores, there was this aswell: I was determined to resist that shameless sister of war propaganda—the advertising industry.

Wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction and many go that way

[John] watched the flames for a while. I would have to say that I find God in serving His children. When I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stanger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, imprisoned and you came to me. The words lingered in the air as the fire popped and hissed softly. Sondoz had stopped pacing and stood motionless in a far corner of the room, his face in shadows, firelight glittering on the metallic exoskeleton of his hands. Dont hope for more than that, John, he said. God will break your heart.

Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future.

he had offered some of his own background. A youth in the South. An education in the North. Bred for life in the East. Trying not to die in the West.

When a man beats his boy, he wants a son who wont buck him. Hes trying to make a coward. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it works.And the hundredth boy?We can go either way. Kill the old man, or try to become a better one.

Do you know what made me fall in love with you? George asked suddenly. Anne shook her head, puzzled that he should ask her this now. I heard you laugh, down the hall, just before I got to Spanish class that first day. I couldnt see you. I just heard this fabulous laugh, like a whole octave, top to bottom. And I had to hear it again.

If somebody honks a horn in Cleveland, theyre saying Hi. Its so rare to be honked at in anger. When we have merging traffic, we just interweave. Theres real courtesy.

“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. ”