quotes by David James Duncan

"Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to idealize a world which ought to be. But no matter what political or religious direction such idealists choose, their visions always share one telling characteristic: in their utopias, heavens or brave new worlds, their greatest personal weakness suddenly appears to be a strength."
— David James Duncan (The Brothers K)

"The Austrian writer Robert Musil summed up the Fanatic's great rhetorical advantage in just ten words:

There is no truth which stupidity can't make use of.

Another Austrian, novelist Heimito von Doderer, put this way:

Even the most impossible persons who do the most unforgivable things possess substantial reality; from their points of view they are always right – for let them only doubt that and they are no longer such impossible persons. And we must pay close heed to those who play such ungrateful roles, for these roles are indispensable. It is no small thing to be a monster or a spiteful idiot, and in the first case to think oneself beautiful, in the second a highly intelligent person. Such characters must be represented. Some one has to do it."
— David James Duncan

"[There is a] kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa’s prayer: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.” Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world. It gives me pause to realize that, were such a prayer said by me and answered by God, I would afterward possess a heart so open that even hate-driven zealots would fall inside... [My] sense of the world as a gift, my sense of a grace operative in this world despite its terrors, propels me to allow the world to open my heart still wider, even if the openness comes by breaking—for I have seen the whole world fall into a few hearts, and nothing has ever struck me as more beautiful."
— David James Duncan

"We hear nothing so clearly as what comes out of silence. "
— David James Duncan

"I'd taken a big fat crisis off my shoulders and loaded it all on Jesus, which seemed unfair in a way, but was exactly what the Bible recommended."
— David James Duncan

"And onto the screen pops a couple of housewives who start having a poop fit when they see how clean their new dish soap got the dinner plates"
— David James Duncan

"Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period at the end of a statement we've long taken for granted, suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along."
— David James Duncan (My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, from Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark)

"JUDAS PRIEST BUDDHIST PRIEST! WILL YOU SET THE FUCKIN' HOOK?"
— David James Duncan (My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, from Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark)

"Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to idealize a world which ought to be. But no matter what political or religious direction such idealists choose, their visions always share one telling characteristic: in theri utopias, heavens or brave new worlds, their greatest personal weakness suddenly appears to be a strength."
— David James Duncan (The Brothers K)