“Summer lightning made it seem that flickering white-hot wires were turning in the terribly blue sky just above the horizon, and the recent storms had driven in toward shore hundreds of gigantic Portuguese man-o'-wars that now hung below the surface of the water like big malignant pearls.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard
“Byron had drawn his pistol, and was looking closely at the leaves and dirt around him, as if he'd dropped something. "It's -- do keep calm now -- it's right over your head. I suppose you could look, if you can do it slowly."
Crawford felt drops of sweat run down his ribs under his shirt as he slowly forced the muscles of his neck to tilt his head up; he saw the upper slope, bristling with trees that obstructed a view of the road, and then he saw the outer branches of the tree he was braced against, and finally he gathered his tattered courage and looked straight up.
And it took all of his self-control not to recoil or scream, and he was distantly resentful that he couldn't just die in this instant.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard
“Is this Christian charity as it’s practiced in Bern?” He stood up, rapping his head against the low ceiling. “The Church has become a more … exclusive club since the founder’s day, it’s clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard
“Newton must have been right when he’d said that light consisted of particles, for today he could feel them hitting him.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard
“Byron; and, realistically, quite a number of those infants will die without my care, and Josephine is hardly a creature with potential, hardly anybody’s idea of a tabula rasa, a blank slate—hell, she’s a slate that’s had bad math scrawled on it and then been waxed so that nothing can ever be written on it again. I’ve treated sheep that had more of a right to live.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard
“It doesn't exactly fill me with pride."
"For what, being a white man?"
"For being a carbon based life-form.”
― Jonathan Maberry, quote from The Dragon Factory
“...I had spent hours talking with people who had trouble believing. For some, the issue was that they believed less than they thought they should about Jesus. They were not trouble by the idea that he may have had two human parents instead of one or that his real presence with his disciples after his death might have been more metaphysical than physical. The glory they beheld in him had more to do with the nature of his being than with the number of his miracles, but they had suffered enough at the hands of true believers to learn to keep their mouths shut.
For others, the issue was that they believed more than Jesus. Having beheld his glory, they found themselves running into God's glory all over the place, including places where Christian doctrine said that it should not be. I knew Christians who had beheld God's glory in a Lakota sweat lodge, in a sacred Celtic grove, and at the edge of a Hawaiian volcano, as well as in dreams and visions that they were afraid to tell anyone else about at all. These people not only feared being shunned for their unorthodox narratives, they also feared sharing some of the most powerful things that had ever happened to them with people who might dismiss them.
Given the history of Christians as a people who started out beholding what was beyond belief, this struck me as a lamentable state of affairs, both for those who have learned to see no more than they are supposed to see as well as for those who have excused themselves from traditional churches because they see too little or too much. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, quote from Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
“Per il dolore, la felicità, l'amore non ci sono segni. E questo mi sembra di rara infelicità.”
― Christa Wolf, quote from Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays
“One less desirable aspect of democracy is that it seems to require serious demonization of the enemy if the nation and public opinion are to be galvanized sufficiently to pay a serious price in blood or treasure at war.”
― Graham E. Fuller, quote from A World Without Islam
“Their next reunion shifted like an oasis on the horizon, and Jude couldn't plot her course. She trudged through her days, haunted by the feeling that real life was happening five thousand kilometers away.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Landing
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