Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

I mean Jesus never asked a man to do a damn thing that Jesus didn’t do.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

It is not what you meant to say, but it is what you're saying meant.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

M'Lord, I know from history that once upon a time in a much earlier Church, a vocation to the priesthood meant a call from the bishop, not necessarily a call from God. And I heard the Bishop of Rome himself call you to be that which you have now become by ordination and consecration.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

Perhaps in his loneliness he had acquired the silent conviction that he was 'the last', the one, the only. And, being the last, he ceased to be Benjamin, becoming Israel. And upon his heart had settled the history of five thousand years, no longer remote, but become as the history of his own lifetime. His "I" was the converse of the imperial "We.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

Science Fiction has always attracted more talented writers than it could reward adequately.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

Steel screams when it's forged, it gasps when it's quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

Then his singing paused, and he stood for a moment to cry out softly in the vernacular of the region: 'Best be Donor Elohim, King of All, who make bread to spring forth from the earth,' in a sort of nasal bleat. The bleat being finished, he sat again, and commenced eating. The wanderer had come a long way indeed, thought Brother Francis, who knew of no adjacent realm governed by a monarch with such an unfamiliar name and such strange pretensions.

— Walter M. Miller Jr.