Wade

“I think he was just doing his best, getting along by going along with my mother, whose piety and evangelical fever had preoccupied her family since the last century. She knew no other world - God the Tyrant and supplicant humanity crawling on its belly to be forgiven for sins they never knew they'd committed. 'It's no sense defying the LORD,' she told me. 'He's got all the coons up one tree.”
― Thomas McGuane, Driving on the Rim

“He does see Himself as the Divine Artist. Of course, He is also a blunderer—so many of His creations are botched. A good many are disasters which He then proceeds to plow back into the food chain. That is His only means of keeping His multitudinous, mediocre, and often meaningless spawnings from choking the existence of the rest. Yet, I will admit, He is dogged. He is still looking to improve His previous creations.”
― Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest

“Napoleon said that if it weren't for religion the poor would kill the rich. This may be all you needed to know about any human community. The churches were the real police stations, the real keepers of law and order.”
― Thomas McGuane, Driving on the Rim

“Oh , kinda playing things by ear”
― Norman Mailer