|
506e93a
|
In Texas, rocks are considered an adequate weaponry during schoolyard scuffles. Dallas children carry a brace of loaded pistols, a concealed Derringer, and a 6 inch Toadsticker in one boot. That's the girls of course. Boys bring howitzers to class.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
a872053
|
I movin' to Arizona! Dammit, there is nothin' there but gravel and scorpions.
|
|
humor
scorpions
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
1098c5c
|
It is a scholar's task to find patterns in nature or cycles in history. Initially, it's no different from finding portraits of animals and heroes in the stars. The question is, Have you discovered a preexisting truth? Or have you imposed an arbitrary meaning on whatever it is you're considering?
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
6446b1d
|
It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne's last night and to receive no plain answers," he said. "Perhaps this is because we can't understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God's ways and God's thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
8ab7ed1
|
I think the world will be a better place when science has swept all religions into the dustbin of history. What is religion but a shared belief in things that cannot be known.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
edfb81e
|
Dust rises at every step, fine as flour. It is dried river silt, that dust. Add water, and the soil is so fertile that you could plant a pencil and harvest a book.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
0a511fe
|
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.
|
|
family
love
birth
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
80e4489
|
They strolled toward town, stopping now and then to let him catch his breath and to gaze upward, for the west Kansas sky is black velvet on clear, cool December nights, and the Milky Way is strung across it like the diamond necklace of a crooked banker's mistress.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
201ca1b
|
IF YOU WANT A STORYBOOK ENDING, stop--now--and remember them in that tender moment. Be content to know that they embarked on a series of adventures throughout the West and that they stayed together through thick and thin for forty-five years. But know this as well: If their story ended here, no one would remember them at all. Where a tale begins and where it ends matters. Who tells the story, and why . . . That makes all the difference.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
3e68582
|
I]t is easier to ask forgiveness than to obtain permission.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
e4eef90
|
To leave the apple unpicked--that was sin.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
038bf0b
|
Add water, and the soil is so fertile that you could plant a pencil and harvest a book.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
e3523e2
|
My experience is that many things are not as bad as I thought they would be.
|
|
mindfulness
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
e8a950d
|
No one who does not live with constant pain can imagine the toll it takes. The way it grinds you down. The sheer damnable tedium of it.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
31259e3
|
Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I'm presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money. (64)
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
89dd077
|
How long ago did she die, Wyatt?" Morgan pressed. "Is it nine years now?" "Eight," Wyatt said, halfway between stubborn and sad. "I promised to love her all my life, Morg. I meant to keep my word." That shut Morgan up, but Doc's eyes opened and he gazed at Wyatt for a long time. "What?" Wyatt asked. "That is your ghost life, Wyatt," Doc told him, and closed his eyes again. "That is the life you might have had. This is the life you've got."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
2ba8593
|
For Russian Jews, Zionism was an immediate solution to age-old problems. "Anywhere is better than Russia," Karl agreed, "but for Western Jews, Zionism is a trap, I think. Once Jews are permitted a territorial center, it will be too easy to drive the rest of us from every other nation on Earth. 'Go back where you belong!' " he cried dismissively, jerking his thumb toward Palestine. " 'Oh, by the way, leave all your possessions behind.' " .....
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
3f18c13
|
Doc seemed to gather himself to say something important, and spoke as firmly as he could, though his voice was somewhere between a whisper and a whine. "Wyatt, I cannot make you another denture. No more fights. You get that mad again, shoot the bastard. Promise me."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
74d9c8c
|
Why is it that God gets all the credit for the good stuff, but it's the doctor's fault when shit happens? When the patient comes through, it's always 'Thank God,' and when the patient dies, it's always blame the doctor. Just once in my life, just for the sheer fucking novelty of it, it would be nice if somebody blamed God when the patient dies, instead of me.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
4da11f9
|
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."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
aa3a81c
|
Ah, Sofia, darlin'! On my best days, I believe in Him with all my heart.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
2bc70a0
|
until you've been there, you can't know what it's like to hold yourself to promises you made in good faith a long time ago.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
7cd5288
|
As many as thirty or as few as ten years later, lying exhausted and still, eyes open in the dark long after the three suns of Rakhat had set, no longer bleeding, past the vomiting, enough beyond the shock to think again, it would occur to Emilio Sandoz to wonder if perhaps that day int he Sudan was really only part of the setup for a punchline a life-time in the making. It was an odd thought, under the circumstances. He understood that, eve..
|
|
faith
fear
god
humor
joke
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
11fb30a
|
Wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction and many go that way
|
|
religious
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
616d336
|
You ever hear that old joke about the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building?" D.W. asked her. "Yeah. All the way down, you could hear him say, 'So far, so good. So far, so good. So far, so good.' That is George's life story in a nutshell."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
8f227a4
|
Doc's idea of "clarifyin' a point of contention" came awful close to spitting in a man's eye."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
fb637ab
|
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.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
2af6606
|
Dead men don't pay for baths, haircuts, meals, or beds. Dead men don't buy new clothes, or ammunition, or saddles. Dead men don't desire fancy Coffeyville boots with Texas stars laid into the shank. They don't gamble, and they don't spend money on liquor or whores. And that was why, when the Texans got to Dodge, there was really only one rule to remember. Don't kill the customers. All other ordinances were, customarily, negotiable.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
f153a7c
|
I know this will sound glib, but don't pretend you aren't feeling what you feel. That's how things slide into hell. Feelings are facts," she said, her voice a little hard, as she began to walk again. "Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If"
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
91d6cd2
|
And you believe you will succeed, where God has failed me?
|
|
god
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
378805a
|
God's got a lot of explaining to do. Of course, God never explains. When life breaks your heart, you're just supposed to pick up the pieces and start all over, I guess.
|
|
heartbreak
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
b1dc068
|
Its not lying, it's remembering things the way they should have been.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
426f49b
|
There's an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists. And Matthew 10:29.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
6b8af46
|
You've seen what," Emilio conceded, "but not why! That's where God is, Anne. In the why of it--in the meaning."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
4d65abc
|
Whatever you worship will consume you, Dong-Sing wrote one week. Bob Wright worships money. Wyatt Earp worships justice. Eddie Foy worships applause. Doc worships home and family, as I do. How will this consume us?
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
a670d56
|
The single craziest thing about being a priest, he'd found, was that celibacy was simultaneously the most private and most public aspect of his life. One of his linguistics professors, a man named Samuel Goldstein, had helped him understand the consequences of that simple fact. Sam was Korean by birth, so if you knew his name, you knew he was adopted. "What got me when I was a kid was that people knew something fundamental about me and my f..
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
91a6291
|
You are young, Father Iron Horse, and you have a young man's vices. Certainty. Shortsightedness. Contempt for pragmatism.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
5cf727c
|
What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those aren't human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
1305a22
|
I think the world will be a better place when science has swept all religion into the dustbin of history. What is religion but a shared belief in things that cannot be known? When we substitute concurrence for fact, fantasy quickly replaces knowledge. Why? Because knowledge is much more trouble to acquire!
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
f6c2e6d
|
The Elder is called Dee, first-born, of the Yarbrough lineage, whose landname is VaWaco.
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
340de1f
|
When the bet is placed," he said, "a moment is carved away from the past and the future. In that enchanted moment, anything is possible. A man's debts and regrets and limitations disappear. He is buyin' the chance to imagine - for one moment at a time - that th enext card I deal will make him rich."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
4ccc4de
|
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 he'd always known. He was bred to this anger. It had been in him since the cradle. He'd never bullied neighbors or beaten a horse. He'd never punched the front teeth out of a six-yea..
|
|
wyatt-earp
tombstone
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
f0dd688
|
For five weeks, the Associated Press had provided the world with lurid coverage of the attack on Virgil Earp, which was labeled Cow Boy revenge for what was being called "the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" because it took too long to set the type for "Gunfight in the Vacant Lot behind Camillus Fly's Photography Studio Near Fremont Street."
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |
|
e6c0e17
|
there are still times when the thief I started out to be feels more authentic to me than the priest I've been for decades. To be pulled out of a slum and educated is to be an outsider forever--" He stopped talking, deeply embarrassed. Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid for their education: the inevitable alienation from your uncomprehending family, from roots, from your own first person, from the original "I" yo..
|
|
|
Mary Doria Russell |