Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material succ...
To be American is to be part of a dialogical and democratic operation that grapples with the challenge of being human in an open-ended and experimental manner. Although America is a romantic project in which a paradise, a land of dreams, is fanned an...
I am, apparently, of that rare breed that likes to write. The demands of a chapter pull me from bed in the morning, and regardless of how well I think I know the day's road ahead, there are always surprises. But the pleasures that come from writing a...
Chef: [singing] Everything worked out what a happy end. Americans and Canadians are friends again. So let's all join hands and knock oppression down. Cartman, Kyle, Stan: Don't you know our little lives are now complete? Mrs. Cartman, Sheila Brofl...
LaBoeuf: You are getting ready to show your ignorance now, Cogburn. I don't mind a little personal chaffing but I won't hear anything against the Ranger troop from a man like you.L Rooster Cogburn: How long have you boys been mounted on sheep down th...
[Carolyn is introducing Lester to the Real Estate King] Carolyn Burnham: My husband, Lester. Buddy Kane: It's a pleasure. Lester Burnham: Oh, we've met before, actually. This thing last year, Christmas at the Sheraton... Buddy Kane: [pretends to reme...
Toby Radloff: I'm not going to be eating dinner until very late and this has got to hold me over. Harvey Pekar: Yeah? Whaddya got? A church function? Toby Radloff: No. I'm driving to Toledo to see a movie. Wouldya like to come? Harvey Pekar: No. Nah....
Danny Vinyard: So I guess this is where I tell you what I learned - my conclusion, right? Well, my conclusion is: Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it. Derek says it's always good to end a paper with...
Of course one’s sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one’s class, race, gender, and sexual identification. … But [regarding] national character …, aside from references to a national aest...
Nearly everyone who is asked where they want to spend their final days says at home, surrounded by people they love and who love them. That's the consistent finding of surveys and, in my experience as a doctor, remains true when people become patient...
You can tell a lot about a country by its prisons. In hippy-dippy Socialist Sweden, rapists and murders (all three of them) while away their days making arts and crafts in what are essentially taxpayer-funded mental health clinics. The Swedes’ theo...
Sometmes when you pull knives on people, they get this impression that you're going to hurt them, and then they're completely terrified. Crazy, I know!" "Okay," said Nick. He turned to Jamie & popped his left wrist sheath again. "Look." Jamie backed ...
I break out laughing. I frown. I yell and scream. Sometimes, if one jokes and giggles, one causes war. So I hide how tickled I am. Tears well up in my eyes. My body is a large city. Much grieving in one sector. I live in another part. Lakewater. Some...
In my living room there are two large bookcases, each one eight feet tall, and they have about five hundred books between them. If I step up to a shelf and look at the books one by one, I can remember something about each. As a historian once said, s...
She opened her eyes to find a strange man above her. "Ahh," he sighed. "Your eyes are the color of jade. I imagined them to be dark, like your hair. How strange." She continued to stare at him without a word. His figure loomed over her, and he stared...
David Kleinfeld: [watching an Italian man dancing with Gail] You're gonna let this fuckin' goombah paw your woman like that? Carlito: Hey, they're just dancin'. Don't you appreciate that? The movement. The rhythm. What I don't appreciate is he's got ...
Logan: If you had your powers you'd know I was telling the truth. Charles Xavier: How do you know I don't have... [pause] Charles Xavier: Who are you? Logan: I told you. Charles Xavier: Are you CIA? Logan: No. Charles Xavier: Have you been watching m...
I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could ...
My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and in...
The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors – in which they would have been ...
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our i...
