Reading Aloud to My Father I chose the book haphazard from the shelf, but with Nabokov's first sentence I knew it wasn't the thing to read to a dying man: The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began, and common sense tells us that our existence is but ...
From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his boot maker, but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or non-existent
He saw in that instant a life he could not conceive of opening before him, a hopeless abyss. Either way he was doomed: He did what was wrong, and condemned himself, or he did what was right, and remained a ghost.
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of...
To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.
At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abys...
Most of my life, I feel I have been Unicycling at the Edge of the Abyss! If fact, this will be the name of my book if I ever write one, or a one man stand up routine. I have used it as the name of a collection of my musical compositions written durin...
Sit down before fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing. Don’t push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction.
[Bud is being put into the fluid-breathing suit] Virgil: So, I can hear you, but I can't talk, right? Ensign Monk: The fluid prevents the larynx from making sound. Excuse me. It'll feel a little strange. Virgil: Yeah, no shit.
Alan "Hippy" Carnes: You know, we got Russian subs creepin' around; anythin' goes wrong they can say whatever they want happened! Give their folks medals! Virgil: Relax, will ya? You're makin' the women nervous. Lindsey Brigman: Cute, Virgil.
Lindsey Brigman: [as the Pseudopod approaches] Bud! Bud! Get up! [Bud sits up, stares at the pseudopod] Virgil: [throwing a pillow at Cat] Hey, Cat. Cat! Catfish De Vries: [half-awake] Hey, lemme alone. [sees the pseudopod, jerks awake and grabs a fl...
Soulmates aren't the ones who make you happiest, no. They're instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dream...
So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in.
The arctic pavement turned into a whirlwind of viscous blood. The fiery shadows on the metropolitan walls blitzed him, avenging overachievers starved for vengeance. He fell into the abyss. His migraine made his head feel heavier than it was. Thoughts...
On our life map, he drew a bright circle around twelve through eighteen. This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to reemerge on corners and prison tiers.
He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.
While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the 'new', which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which...
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, ...
Alan "Hippy" Carnes: What is all this stuff? Ensign Monk: Fluid breathing system, we just got it. You use it when you go really deep. Alan "Hippy" Carnes: How deep? Ensign Monk: Deep. Alan "Hippy" Carnes: HOW deep? Ensign Monk: It's classified.
Virgil: [to the Alien] How do you know they're really gonna do it? Where do you get off passing judgment on us? You can't be sure. How do you know? [the aliens show him gruesome footage of war and conflict; Bud bows his head]
Catfish De Vries: Well, hell, son. You better get a line down to us. We're in moderately poor shape down here. We've lost seven people, including Bud. And we're about out of O2, so whatever you're gonna do, you better do it fast.
