It is a very strange thing to see so many images in the world around us... we don't realise it, but we are all impressionable beings, able to pick up off of the images that bombard us on a daily basis. We are created and moulded by images and impress...
Was joy created always to live under that threat? Always defenseless to those who would rather be miserable than have their self will be crossed? Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? The dema...
The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his mo...
When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn i...
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention...
But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. “I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read…” she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can yo...
Music, this complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, this art made out of mathematics and air, is simply the result of the strange properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist eith...
This principle is taught in Scripture: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In other words, we learn to be loving because we are loved. Grace must come from the outside for us to be able to develop it inside. The opposite side of this t...
Take away the newspaper—and this country of ours would become a scene of chaos. Without daily assurance of the exact facts—so far as we are able to know and publish them—the public imagination would run riot. Ten days without the daily newspape...
Too many people think that when a couple doesn’t fight that they are strong, but I have never bought that. The question should never be “do you fight,” but “can you fight,” because fights happen, that’s just the way it is. What’s import...
Her father dropped her off in front of the place where she was to live and left the engine running. Lila Mae removed the two suitcases from the back of the pickup truck. The suitcases were new, with a formidable casing of green plastic. Scratchproof,...
I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in m...
If they’d caused you pain, I’d never have been able to live with myself,” he said as he backed up a step. “You might want to find another place to sit. Those idiots could cook up a plan for revenge.” “I can’t leave.” Green Eyes took a...
Fixate on whole cultures, not specific pieces of poverty. No specific intervention is going to turn around the life of a child or an adult in any consistent way, but if you can surround a person with a new culture, and different web of relationships,...
Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you’ve written. Comedy pushes...
The Joker: If we don't deal with this now, soon little, uh, Gambol here won't be able to get a nickel for his grandma. Gambol: [explodes] Enough from the clown! [He rises to his feet; Joker does too, opening his coat to reveal a cluster of grenades, ...
Vicomte de Valmont: You see, I have no intention of breaking down her prejudices. I want her to believe in God and virtue and the sanctity of marriage, and still not be able to stop herself. I want the excitement of watching her betray everything tha...
[first lines] Driver: [on phone] There's a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don't need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. No matter what. ...
[referring to Lee Harvey Oswald and mass murderer Charles Whitman] Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Do any of you people know where these individuals learned how to shoot?... Private Joker. Private Joker: Sir. In the Marines, Sir. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: ...
James Bond: Special plane, lunch at the White House... how come? Felix Leiter: The President wants to thank you personally. James Bond: Oh, it was nothing, really. Felix Leiter: I know that, but he doesn't. James Bond: I suppose I'll be able to get a...
Harry Potter: I have to go back, haven't I? Professor Albus Dumbledore: Oh, that's up to you. Harry Potter: I have a choice? Professor Albus Dumbledore: Oh, yes. We're in King's Cross, you say? I think, if you so desired, you'd be able to board a tra...