Christopher Moore

“The Holy Mother has many faces, but you know it's her from her blue cloak. She is said to be the spirit in all women." "Look, here she is naked and the baby Jesus has wings, " said Lucien."That is not the Holy Mother, that's Venus and that's not Jesus, that is Cupid, the Roman god of love.""Wouldn't she have the spirit of the Holy Mother as well?""No, she is a pagan myth.""What about Maman? Is the spirit of the Holy Mother in her?""No, Lucien, your mother is also a pagan myth. Come, look at these paintings of wrestlers.”

“Everyone thinks that it was the big strong caveman who got the girl, and for the most part, that may have been true, but physical strength doesn't explain how our species created civilization. I think there was always some scrawny dreamer sitting at the edge of the firelight, who had the ability to imagine dangers, to look into the future in his imagination and see possibilities, and therefore survived to pass his genes on to the next generation. When the big ape men ended up running off the cliff or getting killed while trying to beat a mastodon into submission with a stick, the dreamer was standing back thinking 'Hey, that might work, but you need to run the mastodon off the cliff.' And, then he'd mate with the women left over after the go-getters got killed.”

“Sorry. Accident. Couldn't be helped.”

“…turning your ankle hurts like hell, even if you're a superhero.”

“In fact, amid all the musical laments over not having a heart, a brain, or the nerve, did anyone notice that they didn’t have a penis among them? I think it would have shown on the Lion and the Tin Man, and when the Scarecrow has his pants destuffed, you don’t see a flying monkey waving an errant straw Johnson around anywhere, doI think I know what song I’d be singing: Oh, I would while away the hours, Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song, I’d be gilding all the lilies as I waved about my willie If I only had a schlong.”

“bet he was myrrh,” said Josh. “Bastard, he brings the cheapest gift and now he wants to sodomize me. My mother told me the myrrh went bad after a week too.” Did I mention that Joshua was not a myrrh fan?”

“Snake eyes!" the croupier said.          "Lizard dick!" Coyote shouted back.This sent me to convulsions.”

“Rivera rubbed his temples. "Satan told you to do it?" he said wearily."No.""Elvis?""I told you, it's supernatural.”

“It was an eight-harlot inn, if that's how you measure an inn. (I understand that now they measure inns in stars. We are in a four-star inn right now. I don't know what the conversion from harlots to stars is.)”

“I will not die for a long time." Joseph tugged at his gray beard. "My beard goes white, but there's a lot of life in me yet.""Don't be so sure, Abba," Joshua said.Joseph dropped the bowl he was working on and stared into his hands. "Run away and play, you two," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.Joshua stood and walked away. I wanted to throw my arms around the old man, for I had never seen a grown man afraid before and it frightened me too. "Can I help?" I said, pointing to the half-finished bowl that lay in Joseph's lap."You go with Joshua. He needs a friend to teach him to be human. Then I can teach him to be a man.”

“I tried cutting myself to express my heartbreak over Tommy (Lord Flood) rejecting me, but OMFG it hurts like flaming fuck.”

“The noise was like, well, it was like a thousand vampire cats clawing on Plexiglas—it made their teeth hurt.”

“Which isn’t, like, as bad as it sounds, because the general public kind of sucks ass.”

“Love them all," said Renoir. "That is the secret, young man. Love them all." The painter let go of his arm and shrugged. "Then, even if your paintings are shit, you will have loved them all.”

“On the radio, turned low, Reba sang of hard times with the full authority of a cross-eyed redheaded millionaire.”

“It’s like he has this power over me—like I have an eating disorder and he’s a package of Oreo Double Stuff cookies.”

“All men are evil, that’s what I was talking to my father about.What did he say?Fuck ‘em.Really?Yeah.At least he answered you.I got the feeling that he thinks it’s my problem now.Makes you wonder why he didn’t burn that on one of the tablets. ‘HERE, MOSES, HERE’S THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, AND HERE’S AN EXTRA ONE THAT SAYS FUCK ‘EM.’He doesn’t sound like that.”

“I love you, Lucien, but I am a muse, you are an artist, I am not here to make you comfortable.”

“That's a horrible plan.""Yes, but I have chosen to ignore that.”

“Oh, how the pillars of lust can crumble under the weight of stupidity.”

“Hope is merely another face of desire. And desire is a motherfucker.”

“It's Christmas! Ah, Christmas, the time when all good people go about not decapitating each other.”

“There's no scientific basis for zombieism -- except for some experiments in the Caribbean with blowfish toxins that put people in a state of near death with almost imperceptible respiration and pulse, but there was no actual, you know, raising of the dead.”

“Enchantment and seduction were fine means of persuasion, but when time is short, an awkward but quick concussion could better serve a girl's purpose.”

“It was sometimes difficult to reconcile a man's talents with his personality.”

“'Paint only what you see,' his hero Millet had admonished.'Imagination is a burden to a painter,' Auguste Renoir had told him. 'Painters are craftsmen, not storytellers. Paint what you see.'Ah, but what they hadn't said, hadn't warned him about, was how much you could see.”

“He slowed to a walk. As he approached her he was surprised at just how pretty she was. She looked a little like Maureen O'Hara in those old pirate movies. His writer's mind kicked in and he thought, This woman could break my heart. I could crash and burn on this woman. I could lose this woman, drink heavily, write profound poems, and die in the gutter of turberculosis over this woman.This was not an unusual reaction for Tommy. He had it often, mostly with girls who worked the drive-through windows at fast-food places. He would drive off with the smell of fries in his car and the bitter taste of unrequited love on his tongue. It was usually good for at least one short story.”

“You put your dick in my lunch?”

“The fool's number is zero, but that's because he represents the infinite possibility of all things. He may become anything. See, he carries all of his possessions in a bundle on his back. He is ready for anything, to go anywhere, to become whatever he needs to be. Don't count out the fool, Pocket, simply because his number is zero.”

“Perhaps there is a reason that there is no fool piece on the chessboard. What action, a fool? What strategy, a fool? What use, a fool? Ah, but a fool resides in a deck of cards, a joker, sometimes two. Of no worth, of course. No real purpose. The appearance of a trump, but none of the power: Simply an instrument of chance. Only a dealer may give value to the joker.”

“Where do you think this guy is leading us?' 'Probably somewhere to murder and kill us.' 'Yeah, at least one of those.”

“You know what? You know what? You know what?' I was waving my finger under her nose. 'You scratched the Son of God. That's your ass, that's what.”

“Do not bonk the Juliette”

“My children are monsters, Kiro thought. And I am responsible. Perhaps if I had read them the haikus of Basho when they were little instead of that American manifesto of high-pressure sales, Green Eggs and Ham...”

“One day I was telling him that I thought that cars had replaced guns as phallic symbols for American men, and I thought it was interesting that he had one that was so small and fast. The next day he gave me the Datsun and went out and bought a Lincoln.”

“Hope is bulletproof, truth just hard to hit”

“Within twelve hours they had pulled mankind's teeth. Then the hunting began.”

“There's something out on the wing.Sir I can assure you that--Fuck, there's something out on the wing.Told you.”

“Earth was totally unprepared for an enemy made of meat.”

“People are douche bags. Many people. Not all. But you know, most.Which is why we destroyed the world.”

“If you like what you're reading, I probably wrote it.”

“Let's high stick that moose in the fun bags.”

“Let's bat that nun out of the dog park!”

“I know you're busy dating actresses and psychopaths.”

“Okey dokey, fire up the blender, let's make a furry-flurry smoothie out of that squirrel!”

“Give us a call or you know, flash a searchlight in the sky with your logo on it, because we monitor everything.”

“People are horrible and they lie.”

“FYI, when I type WTF, you are supposed to read What the Fuck? Same with OMG, and OMFG, which are Oh My God and Oh My Fucking God. Only a completely lame Disney Channel nimnode pronounces the letters.”

“He really wanted to remain angry, but somehow he had come to believe that women were wondrous, mysterious, and magical creatures who should be treated not only with respect but with reverence and even awe. Perhaps it was something that his mother used to say to him. She would say, “Lucien, women are wondrous, mysterious, and magical creatures, who should be treated not only with respect but with reverence, perhaps even awe. Now go sweep the steps.”

“Mr. Asher, you can resist who you are for only so long. Finally, you just decide to go with fate.”