Quotes from Mary Doria Russell

Did you think you were the only one? Is it possible that you are so arrogant?" he asked, in tones of wonderment. Sandoz was blinking rapidly now. "Did you think you were the only one ever to wonder if what we do is worth the price we pay? Did you honestly believe that you alone, of all those who have gone, were the single man to lose God? Do you think we would have a name for the sin of despair, if only you had experienced it?

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.

Hope swears, "You're different, you matter." She whispers, "Miracles happen." She says, often quite reasonably, "New treatments are being developed all the time." She promises, "You'll beat the odds." A hundred to one? A thousand to one? A million to one? "Eight to five", hope lies. Odds are when your time comes, you won't even ask for or against. You'll swing up on that horse and ride.

I am damned if I will spend my time listenin' to ungrammatical, repetitious, imbecilic nonsense without a challenge!

hope you know how much he appreciates your care," Alex told the Earps. "For I was sick, and you came to me," Wyatt said. "Nah," Morgan said. "It was selfishness." Wyatt and Alex were both surprised, but Morgan just shrugged. "Doc doesn't have any brothers," he told Alex. "So we took him for our own.

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 sonofabitch left her in the wilderness alone.

Say what you will about Mormons, but they are very fine dancers.

In science, all sensibly phrased questions are at least potentially answerable, while answers to the questions of faith are, by their very definition, unknowable. With The Sparrow, I hoped to show that both kinds of questions are worth asking, and worth thinking deeply about.

I do not want to spend another minute 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.

don't pretend you aren't feeling what you feel. That's how things slide into hell.

He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it's fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what's out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses.

WELL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the Stella Maris is on her way out of the solar system

There are a thousand ways for a boy of fifteen to go wrong. The most gently reared will lash out, battered by gusts of mindless fury. The brightest can be swamped by black despair. The sweetest may turn sullen and withdrawn. The most rational are quick to anger.

Alice was pretty enough and played piano well, but she was educated in excess of a lady's requirements. She was also possessed of a quiet, stubborn strength of character that had discouraged beaux less determined than Henry Holliday, a Georgia planter ten years her senior.

I want to belong with someone. I want to feel at the center of something, and not the edge. I want children and grandchildren. I don't want to grow old and die, knowing that when I die, there will be no more like me.

Deus vult, mes amis," Marc Robichaux called cheerfully from the galley. "God likes it that way.

Emilio] felt once more the strangely visceral thrill of trying to disprove a hypothesis he suspected was robust.

she was, after all, a practical woman and the daughter of an economist.

The trouble with illusions... is that you aren't aware you have any until they are taken from you

Choose your enemies wisely, for you will become them.

Bein' born is craps. How we live is poker . Mamma played a bad hand well.

I suppose I should warn you, Padre. In the absence of male supervision, my mother has become a revolutionary. ~Renzo Leoni

I've seen what human beings can do- You've seen what... but not why! That's where God is, Anne. In the why of it - in the meaning

When she finished, no one clapped or even breathed, for they were still inside that sacred place that music can sometimes create.