bumpin' uglies

“You writers sure like your pretty phrases.  There’s a few in your last book.  Real pretty.  So pretty they almost seem true.  But, of course, they’re not true, they’re just pretty.  The funny thing is that you still haven’t learned that writing well is the opposite of writing pretty phrases.  No pretty phrase is capable of expressing truth.”
- Javier Cercas; The Speed of Light

"So God finally gave up.  He said I just can’t do any more.  But what I’ll do, he went on saying, just to make things a little better, is I’ll give all the people without faith, all the people who still feel lost and confused and troubled in the world, a God of their own.  This God will sit on the left hand of me, and he’ll be the God of all things that go wrong... It will be his job to look after the sinners and the losers just the way they are, and not try to turn them into saints.  He will offer them comfort when they are down, and make it possible for them to rise to their feet again and run the race one more time."
- Keith Lee Morris; The Greyhound God