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David James Duncan Quotes

Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a commu...

David James Duncan

Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a commu...

Tags: church, clinton, community, corporations, environment, spirituality, village

The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew. I have seen this unity with my eyes, he...

David James Duncan

The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew. I have seen this unity with my eyes, he...

Tags: mysticism, religion, religious freedom, spirituality

About Author
David James Duncan (born 1952) is an American novelist and essayist, best known for his two bestselling novels, The River Why (1983) and The Brothers K (1992). Both novels received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers award; The Brothers K was a New York Times Notable Book in 1992 and won a Best Books Award from the American Library Association. His third novel, Sun House, was released by Little, Brown and Company on August 8, 2023.

Besides a Scientist Marion is also a Pacifist and an Atheist. This means she is basically against most things, such as War, Sports, and God.

David James Duncan

Besides a Scientist Marion is also a Pacifist and an Atheist. This means she is basically against most things, such as War, Sports, and God.

There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative. And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end. Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses: from the Parthenon to the...

David James Duncan

There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative. And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end. Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses: from the Parthenon to the...

Tags: stories

But what really won me over was his butt. What finally made it impossible for me not to like the man was how right out there on the Adventist basepaths, right in front of eighty or ninety of the kind...

David James Duncan

But what really won me over was his butt. What finally made it impossible for me not to like the man was how right out there on the Adventist basepaths, right in front of eighty or ninety of the kind...

Tags: hilarious

The thing i found offensive, the thing i hated about mohican-mountain-makers, gill-netters, poachers, whalehunters, strip-miners, herbicide-spewers, dam-erectors, nuclear-reactor-builders or anyone wh...

David James Duncan

The thing i found offensive, the thing i hated about mohican-mountain-makers, gill-netters, poachers, whalehunters, strip-miners, herbicide-spewers, dam-erectors, nuclear-reactor-builders or anyone wh...

I gave him everything from my lunches I hate, which is called Charity.

David James Duncan

I gave him everything from my lunches I hate, which is called Charity.

Tags: sacrifice

I didn't hurt anymore, didn't feel like hiding anymore, wasn't scared anymore. Because I wasn't anything anymore. Not anything I love or know or care about. Because thou shalt not kill, Kade. Thou sha...

David James Duncan

I didn't hurt anymore, didn't feel like hiding anymore, wasn't scared anymore. Because I wasn't anything anymore. Not anything I love or know or care about. Because thou shalt not kill, Kade. Thou sha...

Tags: vietnam, war

The Austrian writer Robert Musil summed up the Fanatic's great rhetorical advantage in just ten words: There is no truth which stupidity can't make use of.

David James Duncan

The Austrian writer Robert Musil summed up the Fanatic's great rhetorical advantage in just ten words: There is no truth which stupidity can't make use of.

This man obviously contained some sort of catalytic converter that rendered the filth of his language as natural and inoffensive as dirt in a garden.

David James Duncan

This man obviously contained some sort of catalytic converter that rendered the filth of his language as natural and inoffensive as dirt in a garden.

Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.

David James Duncan

Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.

To defy the God of Progress is often to marry the Goddess of Poverty.

David James Duncan

To defy the God of Progress is often to marry the Goddess of Poverty.

Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

David James Duncan

Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

There was an old Taoist who lived in a village in ancient China, named Master Hu. Hu loved God and God loved Hu, and whatever God did was fine with Hu, and whatever Hu did was fine with God. They were...

David James Duncan

There was an old Taoist who lived in a village in ancient China, named Master Hu. Hu loved God and God loved Hu, and whatever God did was fine with Hu, and whatever Hu did was fine with God. They were...

Tags: inspirational

I said we aren’t here to fucking like Vietnamese things, we’re here to kill or be killed by them, and telling me to wander around looking for bright sides and good things is like telling me to hurry u...

David James Duncan

I said we aren’t here to fucking like Vietnamese things, we’re here to kill or be killed by them, and telling me to wander around looking for bright sides and good things is like telling me to hurry u...

When experience flies into realms that language cannot touch, honesty demands beyond-language.

David James Duncan

When experience flies into realms that language cannot touch, honesty demands beyond-language.

Thus did my siblings and I learn one of the hard lessons of life: the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.

David James Duncan

Thus did my siblings and I learn one of the hard lessons of life: the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.

The crowd-pleasing, pilfered genre had mated with democracy and produced a seemingly invincible bastard: government by force of farce.

David James Duncan

The crowd-pleasing, pilfered genre had mated with democracy and produced a seemingly invincible bastard: government by force of farce.

Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of b...

David James Duncan

Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of b...

Him, trying to do the same.

David James Duncan

Him, trying to do the same.