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4fc06c3
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Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine. She
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Mary Doria Russell |
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25e0bc4
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Maybe God is only the most powerful poetic idea we humans're capable of thinkin'," he said one night, after a few drinks. "Maybe God has no reality outside our minds and exists only in the paradox of Perfect Compassion and Perfect Justice. Or maybe," he suggested, slouching back in his chair and favoring her with a lopsided, wily grin, "maybe God is exactly as advertised in the Torah. Maybe, along with all its other truths and beauties, Jud..
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Mary Doria Russell |
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78aa794
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Like we say back home, when you find a turtle settin' on top of a fencepost, you can be pretty damn sure he didn't get there on his own.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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a35a418
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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."
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religion
sci-fi
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Mary Doria Russell |
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5bd54bb
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And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes.
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science-fiction
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Mary Doria Russell |
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3854bab
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Sighing, he rose from his desk and walked to the windows to stare out at the Vatican through the rain. What a burden men like Sandoz carried into the field. Over four hundred of Ours to set the standard, he thought, and remembered his days as a novice, studying the lives of sainted, blessed and venerated Jesuits. What was that wonderful line? "Men astutely trained in letters and in fortitude." Enduring hardship, loneliness, exhaustion and s..
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Mary Doria Russell |
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b952b4b
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Et diye yedikleriniz meydan okuyor, et diye yedikleriniz bas kaldiriyor, et diye yedikleriniz savasiyor! Et diye yediklerinizin nefesi ensenizde...
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Mary Doria Russell |
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df0d964
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the past was not dead but alive, and important by virtue of the very invisibility of its influence.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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ad22211
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I believe in God the way I believe in quarks," she said coolly. "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 they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did."
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Mary Doria Russell |
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96d43e4
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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 God's love and care with the stupid, brutal fact th..
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tragedy
grief
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Mary Doria Russell |
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5229a94
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it seemed entirely possible to him that religion and literature and art and music were all merely side effects of a brain structure that comes into the world ready to make language out of noise, sense out of chaos. Our capacity for imposing meaning, he thought, is programmed to unfold the way a butterfly's wings unfold when it escapes the chrysalis, ready to fly. We are biologically driven to create meaning. And if that's so, he asked himse..
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Mary Doria Russell |
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1c2b9b9
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I had enjoyed something that did not belong to me, you see. When it was taken away, I was disappointed but not harmed.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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02566f3
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Why, he had once wondered, would a perfect God create the universe? To be generous with it, he believed now. For the pleasure of seeing pure gifts appreciated. Maybe that's what it meant to find God: to see what you have been given, to know divine generosity, to appreciate the large things and the small ...
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Mary Doria Russell |
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38598d3
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I suppose I should warn you, Padre. In the absence of male supervision, my mother has become a revolutionary." ~Renzo Leoni"
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Mary Doria Russell |
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e6e323f
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Maybe poetry is the only way we can get near the truth of God.... And when the metaphors fail, we think it's God who's failed us!
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Mary Doria Russell |
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2b8bfba
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When a man beats his boy, he wants a son who won't buck him. He's 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.
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corporal-punishment
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Mary Doria Russell |
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2588986
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It was just as well that neither Wyatt nor Morgan inquired about the provenance of the teeth themselves, for Wyatt's new ones were among the hundreds of thousands collected from battlegrounds, sorted by type and size, and made available for restorative dentistry for many years after the war. With John Henry's sketches and detailed measurements to go by, his cousin Robert had found a pair of upper centrals that matched Morgan's closely.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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4ac3feb
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I honestly don't know if the world would be better or worse if we all held ourselves to the vows of our youth.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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47adf37
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It came to Morgan that Nicholas must have been a beaten boy, too, and that meant Grampa Earp was, as well. Which was no surprise, really, when Morg thought about that mean old man. How many sons were in that chain? Morgan wondered, and grief gave way to the pride he'd felt the day his brother Wyatt stood up to his first bully and put an end to a chain of vengeful, frightened, beaten boys.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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422965f
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Jesus Christ," Jimmy breathed, meeting the future by turning to the ancient past."
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Mary Doria Russell |
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b710d53
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Once I told Haanala 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.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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43d65fc
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The irony is that each new war begins in hope: hope of restoring lost honor, hope of redressing injustices and reclaiming tarnished glory, hope of a grand new world. Each war ends with the black seeds of the next war sown: honor newly lost, injustice freshly inflicted, a world more broken than before. Always, someone steps forward, ready to water and weed and harvest those black seeds, dreaming of the day when they will bring forth their bo..
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Mary Doria Russell |
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606a9a4
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Sadie was at his side when the old desire to leave everything behind rose up in him again. "Suppose . . ." he began. "Suppose . . ." Then he moved on, one last time."
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wyatt-earp
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Mary Doria Russell |
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195854b
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The trick is not to care. I have a perfect indifference to winning.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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ec71ed1
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After all, he thought, the one thing an agnostic knows for sure is: you never know.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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137e034
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I would not have voted for the man," Doc admitted, "but this--" He lifted a fine-boned hand toward the street, where small groups of Cow Boys were now tearing down Allen on horseback, shooting at the sky and racing beyond the city limits before the police could do anything about the ruckus. "This is indecent." --
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Mary Doria Russell |
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71143cc
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Flaubert tells us that three things are required for happiness: stupidity, selfishness, and good health. I am," he told Morgan, "an unhappy man -"
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Mary Doria Russell |
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ed95a73
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I am damned if I will spend my time listenin' to ungrammatical, repetitious, imbecilic nonsense without a challenge!
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Mary Doria Russell |
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27d903a
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Every one of them [prostitutes] has a story, and every story begins with a man who failed her. A husband who came home from the war, good for nothin' but drink. A father who didn't come home at all, or a stepfather who did. A brother who should have protected her. A beau who promised marriage and left when he got what he wanted, because he wouldn't marry a slut. If a girl like that has lost her way, it's because some worthless no-account so..
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Mary Doria Russell |
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63dacc2
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He was aware of his agnosticism, and patient with it. Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn't perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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7d388c2
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Deus vult, mes amis," Marc Robichaux called cheerfully from the galley. "God likes it that way."
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Mary Doria Russell |
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d22c702
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Stability and order have always been paid for with captivity and blood. (76)
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Mary Doria Russell |
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4b4b2ac
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Sometimes," he told her, leaning forward over the table, speaking without realizing how it would sound, "I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, songs of love for the present." He blushed when he heard what he'd said, making it worse, but she took no offense; indeed, she seemed to miss any connection that might have been taken wrongly..
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Mary Doria Russell |
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ab3a6ec
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Love is a debt, she thought. When the bill comes, you pay in grief.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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384faca
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When she finished, no one clapped or even breathed, for they were still inside that sacred place that music can sometimes create.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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de0c800
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Her life had been blessedly unburdened by happiness. When some period of fleeting contentment ended, Sofia Mendes did not register it as outrageous, but merely noted a return to life's normal condition. So, as the first weeks after the massacre passed, she simply counted herself lucky to be among others who did not weep and wail for the dead.
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Mary Doria Russell |
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82dce3d
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How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?" He said nothing more that day, but Ha'anala spent hours considering his words. A soul, she decided, was the most real part of a person, and to discover what is real requires privacy."
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Mary Doria Russell |
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01edfe2
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The new fashions sold in department stores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see. They'd been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittance in terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industry that exploited its desperately poor workers so heartlessly. And if that wasn't enough to keep me out of stores, there was this as well: I was determined to resist that shameless sister of war propagan..
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capitalism
propaganda
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Mary Doria Russell |
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13c234b
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It was politicians saying, "Let's you and him fight!"
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Mary Doria Russell |
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4637a85
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Religion--the wishful thinking of an ape that talks! You know what I think?" he asked rhetorically, trying to distract himself from yet another death. "Random shit happens, and we turn it into stories and call it sacred scripture--"
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Mary Doria Russell |
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ab6a6be
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We meant well, she thought, looking up at a sky piled with cumulus clouds turning amethyst and indigo above the clearing. No one was deliberately evil. We all did the best we could. Even so, what a mess we made of everything ...
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Mary Doria Russell |
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3e75262
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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.
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mortality
western
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Mary Doria Russell |
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d203572
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Dunyadaki huznun yarisi seni istemeyen birini istemektir,
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Mary Doria Russell |
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936f922
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I do not want to spend another of whatever I have left bein' scared. I can't carry the fear anymore. Not mine. Not yours. I have to lay that burden down.
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Mary Doria Russell |