The Penal Colony Quotes

“He had never told her just what he thought of the value of prayer and all the rest of the self-deluding mumbo jumbo with which otherwise rational people tried to humanize the cosmos. Man had created God in his own image, not the other way around.”
― Richard Herley, Penal Colony

“On the mainland he had always lived in the future, always looking forward to the completion of the project in hand. When he passed his exams, got the new contract, married Louise, paid off the mortgage: when, in turn, each of these dreams was realized, then, and only then, would he be happy. All were ends, to be reached by any means expedient or possible. He saw now that there were no such things as ends, only means: for ends were phantoms that melted away when approached, only to reform into other ends further off.”
― Richard Herley, Penal Colony

“If there was a God up there, which there wasn’t, why was it that he worked so hard to identify whatever thing a man dreaded most, and, having identified it, why did he always, always, vindictively succeed in making that very thing come to pass?”
― Richard Herley, Penal Colony