Quotes from Mary Doria Russell

here's what good people do: We don't give up. We will not be cowed. We will refute their lies. We will get the vote, and we will use it. We will take them to court. We will march in their streets, and we will fight for justice every damned step of the way.

We are what we fear in others

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.

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.

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.

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.

the best man for the job can sometimes be a four-year-old girl.

What unnatural words: always and forever! Not even stones are always and forever.

Then he smiled into her eyes and asked, in the dry academic tones of an astronomer discussing a theoretical point with a colleague, 'How long do you suppose I can go on loving you more every day?' And he devised for her a calculus of love, which approached infinity as a limit, and made her smile again.

Doc's idea of clarifyin' a point of contention came awful close to spitting in a man's eye.

I]t is easier to ask forgiveness than to obtain permission.

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.

This much is sure: if Kate hadn't gone back to Doc Holiday on the afternoon of June 10th, 1878, you never would have heard of him. You wouldn't know the names of Wyatt Earp, or any of his brothers. The Clantons and McLaurys would be utterly forgotten. And Tombstone would be nothing more than an Arizona ghost town with an ironic name. Too late now.

You've seen what, Emilio conceded, but not why! That's where God is, Anne. In the why of it—in the meaning.

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?

All the muscles of the palms had been carefully cut from the bones, doubling the length of the fingers, and Sandoz's hands reminded John of childhood Halloween skeletons.

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.

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 himself, is the miracle diminished? It

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 Ã¢â'¬Â¦

You are young, Father Iron Horse, and you have a young man's vices. Certainty. Shortsightedness. Contempt for pragmatism.

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!

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.

In his own soul, he knew with sudden certainty that it was not rebellion or doubt or even sin that broke God's heart; it was indifference.

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.