Doria Quotes & Sayings

Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I'm presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money. (64) — Mary Doria Russell

I do what I do without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently. — Mary Doria Russell

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. — Mary Doria Russell

It no longer came as a surprise to John Candotti that people found him easy to confess to. He was tolerant of human failings and it was rarely difficult for him to say, "Well, you screwed up. Everybody screws up. It's okay." 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

Cleveland is really good about recognizing its artists because of the Arts Council. — Mary Doria Russell

That was when it came to him that the only unmixed happiness he could think of was when he quit his job with the city after that fight with Bob Wright. So he told Doc that, too, and said, "I never meant to be a lawman. Stumbled into it, really. When I quit, it was a weight off." Dealing — Mary Doria Russell

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

House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind. — Mary Doria Russell

The Elder is called Dee, first-born, of the Yarbrough lineage, whose landname is VaWaco. — Mary Doria Russell

We sailed to Italy on the Andrea Doria, a year before it sank, and Zoot (Sims) and I played a lot of ping-pong on deck during that trip. Zoot sparked that [Gerry Mulligan's] sextet in an extraordinary way, soloing with joyous abandon and infusing the ensemble parts with his special brand of swing. — Bill Crow

God will break your heart. — Mary Doria Russell

They were quiet for a time, alone with their thoughts, but then John sat up straight, struck by a thought. "There's a passage in Exodus - God tells Moses, 'No one can see My face, but I will protect you with My hand until I have passed by you, and then I will remove My hand and you will see My back.' Remember that?"
Emilio nodded, listening.
Well I always thought that was a physical metaphor," John said, "but, you know - I wonder now if it isn't really about time? Maybe that was God's way of telling us that we can never know His intentions, but as time goes on ... we'll understand. We'll see where He was: we'll see His back. — Mary Doria Russell

Only here had he come to understand that he was not a battleground - to be divided and conquered by his grandparents - but a garden, where each person who'd contributed to his existence longed to see that something of themselves had taken root and grown. — Mary Doria Russell

That is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, the rest of it was God's will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn't it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances ... is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God. — Mary Doria Russell

Home," he said softly. "If there is a more beautiful word in any language, I do not know it. — Mary Doria Russell

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

No children?" Emilio asked them one evening, to his own surprise.
"Nope. Turned out, we don't breed well in captivity," George said, unembarrassed. — Mary Doria Russell

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. (15) — Mary Doria Russell

The answer was clear, though he half-expected his hand to shrivel and turn black when he voted for a Republican. — Mary Doria Russell

It was politicians saying, Let's you and him fight! — Mary Doria Russell

He felt as though he were a prism, gathering up God's love like white light and scattering it in all directions, and the sensation was nearly physical, as he caught and repeated as much of what everyone said to him as he could, soaking up the music and cadence, the pattern of phonemes on the fly, gravely accepting and repeating Askama's quiet corrections when he got things wrong. — Mary Doria Russell

As far as Wyatt Earp knew, it was not illegal to beat a horse. In the past few years, he'd worked as a part-time policeman in a string of Kansas cow towns. Each time he was sworn in, he made an effort to study the ordinances he was supposed to enforce, but he wasn't much of a reader. In Ellsworth, he asked a lawyer for some help. "Wyatt," the man told him, "the entire criminal code of the State of Kansas boils down to four words. Don't kill the customers. — Mary Doria Russell

In the North, he discoverd, courtesy was considered a barometer of genuine esteem; for any decently brought up Southerner, good manners were simply habitual. — Mary Doria Russell

Wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction and many go that way — Mary Doria Russell

Privileged to share in the athletic power of a large and dangerous animal willing to be controlled by the small, frail strength of a mere human being. — Mary Doria Russell

My experience is that many things are not as bad as I thought they would be. — Mary Doria Russell

In my worldview, there are filers, and there are pilers. Filers think alphabetically. Pilers think geologically. — Mary Doria Russell

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

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

The Doc Holliday of legend is a gambler and gunman who appears out of nowhere in 1881, arriving in Tombstone with a bad reputation and a hooker named Big Nose Kate. — Mary Doria Russell

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

John Henry Holliday didn't have a mother to love him when he was grown, so I have taken him for my own. My fondest hope for Doc is that it will win for him the compassion and respect I think he deserves. — Mary Doria Russell

Maybe that's the way to tell the dangerous men from the good ones. A dreamer of the day is dangerous when he believes that others are less: less than their own best selves and certainly less than he is. They exist to follow and flatter him, and to serve his purposes.
A true prophet, I suppose, is like a good parent. A true prophet sees others, not himself. He helps them define their own half-formed dreams, and puts himself at their service. He is not diminished as they become more. He offers courage in one hand and generosity in the other. — Mary Doria Russell

Have you ever thought about a Twelve Step program for people who talk too much? You could call it On and On Anon. — Mary Doria Russell

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

She was alone and destitute in a world of pointless carnage. By an eight-hundred-year-old Sepahrdic tradition she ad been since the age of twelve and a half "bogeret l'reshut nafsha"
an adult wit authority over her own soul. The Torah taught, Choose life. And so, rather than die of pride, Sofia Mendes sold what she had to sell, and she survived. — Mary Doria Russell

There are times ... when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth.
... When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying. — Mary Doria Russell

[I]t is easier to ask forgiveness than to obtain permission. — Mary Doria Russell

Shall I tell you why young men love war? ... In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one question with one right answer ... Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful. — Mary Doria Russell

Horses are mirrors. They'll show you back whatever you show them. Watch a man with a horse, and you'll see what's inside his own self. — Mary Doria Russell

I'll take honest arrogance over fake humility any day. — Mary Doria Russell

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

Stability and order have always been paid for with captivity and blood. (76) — Mary Doria Russell

Abandon a dachshund and upon your return, you may well be confronted with a small token of her displeasure. This, for the dachshund, is an undignified but necessary form of training. Eventually, you will learn your lesson, which is to take you with her everywhere. When you have finally accepted this, you will be generously rewarded for your good behavior by a jaunty, joyful companion. — Mary Doria Russell

Instead of taking a year off, I started 'Dreamers of the Day' exactly 36 hours after I sent the manuscript for 'A Thread of Grace' to the publisher! — Mary Doria Russell

Emilio was certainly within his rights not to reveal the sordid details of his childhood even to his friends. Or perhaps especially to his friends, whose good opinion of him, he might feel, would not survive the revelations. — Mary Doria Russell

You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they're religious. I do what I do," Anne said, biting off each word, "without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require heaven or hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently, thank you very much. — Mary Doria Russell

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. — Mary Doria Russell

If somebody honks a horn in Cleveland, they're saying 'Hi.' It's so rare to be honked at in anger. When we have merging traffic, we just interweave. There's real courtesy. — Mary Doria Russell

Wyatt, I'm from Chicago," Eddie told him. "Let me explain politics to you. — Mary Doria Russell

Flaubert tells us that three things are required for happiness: stupidity, selfishness, and good health. I am," he told Morgan, "an unhappy man - — Mary Doria Russell

I had enjoyed something that did not belong to me, you see. When it was taken away, I was disappointed but not harmed. — Mary Doria Russell

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" you once were. — Mary Doria Russell

Maybe if I'd studied writing instead of anthropology, I'd be more sensible. You know - pick a genre, follow the rules, stay in the box - but let's face it. Sensible people don't major in anthropology. — Mary Doria Russell

Every one of them 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! — Mary Doria Russell

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! — Mary Doria Russell

The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog. It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren't paying for any superfluous leg. — Mary Doria Russell

The world is filled with unreasonable hate. What's wrong with unreasonable love? — Mary Doria Russell

He's not a bad guy, John. It's human nature. He wanted it to be some mistake I made that he wouldn't have made, some flaw in me that he didn't share, so he could believe it wouldn't have happened to him. But it wasn't my fault. It was either blind, dumb, stupid luck from start to finish, in which case, we are all in the wrong business gentleman, or it was a God I cannot worship. — Mary Doria Russell

Celestina Giuliani learned the word "slander" at her cousin's baptism. — Mary Doria Russell

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. — Mary Doria Russell

an insouciant flip of the wrist - — Mary Doria Russell

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

She was held in the tension just before movement, about to walk back toward the house. Later she would think, If I had turned away, I'd have missed the moment he fell in love.
He would not remember it that way. What he experienced was not so much the beginning of love as a cessation of pain. — Mary Doria Russell

Eternal beginner, starting over and over in a new place in new circumstances, with new languages, new people, a new commission. They had this in common: the continual rushed confrontation with change, the feeling of being hothoused, forced to bloom early, the exhausting exhilaration of doing the unreasonable not just adequately but well and with grace. — Mary Doria Russell

To leave the apple unpicked - that was sin. — Mary Doria Russell

Ringo's chuckle got tangled up with a cough. He tossed back a shot, cleared his throat, and said, Politics, from the Latin. Poly, meaning 'many.' Ticks meaning 'bloodsucking little bastards. — Mary Doria Russell

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

Dachshunds have their own agenda and can be stubborn about seeing their plans through to completion. What Rosie lacked in consistency, she made up for in enthusiasm. Most of the time when I called her name, she sprinted back, her long ears cocked and flying like a little girl's pigtails. Each encounter was a glorious reunion, even if we'd been parted for only a minute or two. I had never felt so loved. — Mary Doria Russell

At the risk of descending to unscientific generalizations, 90 percent of Texans give the other 10 percent a bad name." - Attributed to John H. "Doc" Holliday — Mary Doria Russell

Each generation of adolescents has at least two historical events that color its responses to whatever happens next. — Mary Doria Russell

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 family just by looking at us. I felt like I had a big neon sign over my head flashing ADOPTEE," Sam told him. "It's not that I was ashamed of being adopted. I just wished that I had the option of revealing it myself. — Mary Doria Russell

The sign of a good decision is the multiplicity of reasons for it. — Mary Doria Russell

Guess - You know how people say, Don't borrow trouble? Well," said Morgan, "I guess it's the opposite of that. Doc is borrowing happiness." The — Mary Doria Russell

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. — Mary Doria Russell

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. — Mary Doria Russell

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

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. — Mary Doria Russell

I live and die with the Indians. The first game I attended back in the mid-'90s was almost a religious experience. We were down by six and won by two, and it was glorious. The stadium is so beautiful, and the way it frames the city when you're sitting high above the second base line is spectacular. — Mary Doria Russell

When it comes down to it, I don't have much in the way of advice to offer you, but here it is: Read to children. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who's selling fear. — Mary Doria Russell

Tradition was safety; change was danger. — Mary Doria Russell

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

Even if he hadn't spent the past three years in the field and more than a decade before that studying for the priesthood, he would have felt a stranger among these students - the young men in brilliantly colored, intricately pleated coats that broadened shoulders and narrowed hips, the young women wasp-waisted and delicious in pale and shimmering fabrics the colors of peony blossoms and sherbet. — Mary Doria Russell

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, and songs of love for present tense. — Mary Doria Russell

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

[John] watched the flames for a while. "I would have to say that I find God in serving His children. 'When I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stanger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, imprisoned and you came to me.'"
The words lingered in the air as the fire popped and hissed softly. Sondoz had stopped pacing and stood motionless in a far corner of the room, his face in shadows, firelight glittering on the metallic exoskeleton of his hands. "Don't hope for more than that, John," he said. "God will break your heart. — Mary Doria Russell

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. — Mary Doria Russell

Feelings are facts. Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If God is anything like a middle-class white chick from the suburbs, which I admit is a long shot, it's what you do about what you feel that matters. — Mary Doria Russell

Distressing to be hated because of lies, isn't it." (Mirella)
"Especially when there are so many legitimate reasons to be hated." (Schramm) — Mary Doria Russell

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

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking? — Mary Doria Russell

Show God what yer made of, man. Pucker up and kiss the cross. — Mary Doria Russell

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

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. — Mary Doria Russell

We are none of us born into Eden," Doc said reasonably. "world's plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what's the best way to play a bad hand?" ... — Mary Doria Russell

When we were 15, my girlfriend Ruth Kaplan and I applied to the Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. We were accepted into a program that placed us with a lovely Mexican family. We lived with them for six weeks while studying Spanish poetry and Mexican anthropology. — Mary Doria Russell

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

Your sorrow is of no interest to me," Sandoz said softly. "If you want absolution, go to a priest. — Mary Doria Russell

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.' "
... But I have no need of some artificial homeland invented by the British. I am not a German Jew, Agnes, but a Jewish German. — Mary Doria Russell

You know how people say, Don't borrow trouble? Well, said Morgan, I guess it's the opposite of that. Doc is borrowing happiness. — Mary Doria Russell