"The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God."
— Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow)

"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

"Celestina Giuliani learned the word "slander" at her cousin's baptism."
— Mary Doria Russell (Children of God)

"Rain falls on everyone, lightning strikes some. What cannot be changed is best forgotten. God made the world, and He saw that it was good. Not fair. Not happy. Not perfect. Good."
— Mary Doria Russell (Children of God)

"On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes' walk across St. Peter's Square from the Vatican."
— Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow)

"...[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 (The Sparrow)

""...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 (The Sparrow)

"The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when his children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God."
— Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow)

"Interviewer: Have you ever considered writing nonfiction?
Mary Doria Russell: Oh, honey, I did! Let's see...There was "A Reconsideration of the Evidence for Cannibalism at the Krapina Neandertal Site." That was a big hit. And who could ever forget "Cutmarks on the Engis II Calvarium"? Then there was "Browridge Development as a Function of Bending Stress in the Supraorbital Region." I got tons of reprint requests for that one.

Trust me fiction is better."
— Mary Doria Russell

"The sparrow still falls"
— Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow)

"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 (A Thread of Grace)

"When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty."
— Mary Doria Russell (A Thread of Grace)

"Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine."
— Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow)

"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 (Dreamers of the Day: A Novel)

"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 (Dreamers of the Day: A Novel)

"
In a Loaded Questions Interview on the subject of flipping a coin to see which characters would live and which would die for her novel "Thread of Grace": "So the problem was, How do I avoid writing a Feel-Good Holocaust Novel?""
— Mary Doria Russell (A Thread of Grace)

"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 (The Sparrow)

"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 (The Sparrow)

"I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did."
— Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow)