A New Eden Quotes

“the accepted standard: as an independent, objective journalist, she was never to take a side. Her own personal prejudices and desires and fears didn’t matter – they couldn’t matter. There were always two sides to every story. Everyone has their own truth. She could hear her journalism professor saying it over and over again, could see him scrawling the words with the squeaky marker on the whiteboard. There was no right or wrong. Like Justice holding the scales, she too had to remain blindfolded to judgment, while keeping her eyes wide open, seeing and uncovering as much of the truth as she could possibly find.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“The manhood had always been there. Even as a toddler, her son had always been serious. He had skipped crawling altogether, determined from the start to stand and to walk. He had always carried himself with that Hale self-possession and purposefulness. Her own gentleness and sensitivity were certainly there too, if less readily evident, and he had her family’s taller stature, her father’s eyes. Such beauty – a masculine beauty. In ways, he seemed so unmodern: he had never been shallow, uncertain, self-questioning or self-effacing. He was a throwback, a man’s man, without any of the false machismo. She was terribly interested in him – fascinated, really. As his mother, she was wholly vested in his well-being and happiness, of course, but she wanted more for him, and always more – she was insatiably eager to know how his story would unfold.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“Eight seconds of free fall, eight seconds of falling free, of falling to freedom . . . But no, not to freedom – to nothingness. Where there is no choice there is no freedom, he reminded himself, and where there is no consciousness there can be no choice. Of course he had no real intention”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“Julie regretted having slept with the boy, or more accurately, having done so without protection, but she couldn’t bring herself, as hard as she tried, to feel wrong for having done so. She was chagrined at having made what she considered to be a serious mistake, but she simply was not ashamed of it, and she couldn’t make herself feel an emotion she didn’t feel. The act of lovemaking, she told her mother, had seemed neither wrong nor unnatural. She had been following a desire that God surely had given her for a reason. She had felt terrible about the abortion but she couldn’t bring herself to feel genuinely guilty for that either, given the alternative, which was simply unthinkable to her – and she was too honest to fake a remorse that didn’t and couldn’t exist.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“This was his moment of weakness. He implored his father above to take the coming cup of suffering away from him, if it were possible. But of course it was possible, as anything was possible for the omnipotent. He questioned why his own father, who surely loved his only son more than any of his other creations, would send him to earth to be tortured and killed – why he would do so if it were possible that the desired end could be accomplished through any means God chose. And of course it was possible. Could his omnipotent father not offer some other means by which men might be spared the punishment due them for the sinful state into which they born? Why was it necessary for the perfect to be sacrificed for the imperfect, the sinless for the sinful, the most beloved for the sake of the loved but less loved? Was there no escape for the innocent lamb marked for the slaughter? Was there no justice? No mercy? He agonized and pleaded. He waited for his father’s voice.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“He kicked over the moneychangers’ tables, scattering coins across the stage. He freed the lambs and goats – they bolted, bleating loudly, their owners in pursuit. He released the doves from the cages – they flew out and away from the stage to circle through the auditorium and perch high in the rafters. The children in the audience found much merriment in the mayhem. It was their favorite part of the play so far, a welcome relief from the seriousness and sermonizing. When the last moneychanger had been driven from the temple, the entire audience broke out in applause and hoots. Paige couldn’t help but think of the ticket in her purse and how much she’d paid for it.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“the meaning of it all came crashing through the window of Paige’s soul with a startling violence: She had just partaken in a ritual of token cannibalism, the eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood of a man whom those around her professed to worship and adore, a celebration of human sacrifice – a sacrifice of human perfection. And in the heart of modern-day America.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden

“To question me is to question God, and that is a thing you must never do.”
― Quent Cordair, A New Eden