23 Quotes by Marcel Theroux

It’s a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god’s handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There’s not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungainly walk and its touchhole voids droppings when it strains in harness. Was there a straight line on earth before we drew one?

I had always believed that right was like north to my father: a thing as real as sunlight, a place on the map, the arrow on a compass.

What I found in a city – when I finally saw a real one – was disquieting. Nothing matched. It was a weird assemblage of things, but there was beauty in the oddness of it, and the thought that it was all man’s doing. But.

What arrogance made us think we were far enough to be safe?

I loved my father, but I was not like him. I never needed to believe the best of people. I took them as they were: two-faced, desperate, kind – perhaps all at once. But to Pa, they were all children of god, poor troubled sheep, who only needed love and an even break. He needed the world to back up what his religion told him about people. And when it came down to a choice between reason and faith, he let go of reason.