My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.
The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.
The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.
If the world is irrational, we can never know it – either it or its irrationality.
If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
Jesus don’t walk on water no more; his feet leak.
My books always make the best-seller lists in Wolf Hole, Arizona, and Hanksville, Utah.
The axiom of conditioned repetition, like the binomial theorem, is nothing but a piece of insolence.
What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? ‘Separate checks, please.’
What’s the difference between the Lone Ranger and God? There really is a Lone Ranger.
Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.
Preacher to me: ‘A dollar for the Lord, brother?’ Me to preacher: ‘That’s all right, I’m headed his way. I’ll give it to him when I see him.’
It may be true that there are no atheists in foxholes. But you don’t find many Christians there, either. Or, about as many of one as the other.
Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet.
Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.
To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.
Grand opera is a form of musical entertainment for people who hate music.
The best argument for Christianity is the Gregorian chant. Listening to that music, one can believe anything – while the music lasts.