In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each o...
What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tel...
One day at Fenner's (the university cricket ground at Cambridge), just before the last war, G. H. Hardy and I were talking about Einstein. Hardy had met him several times, and I had recently returned from visiting him. Hardy was saying that in his li...
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and ...
We like to think of individuals as unique. Yet if this is true of everyone, then we all share the same quality, namely our uniqueness. What we have in common is the fact that we are all uncommon. Everybody is special, which means that nobody is. The ...
[W]hat people truly desire is access to the knowledge and information that ultimately lead to a better life--the collected wisdom of the ages found only in one place: a well-stocked library. To the teachers and librarians and everyone on the frontlin...
Literature is impossible, in exactly this sense: every new generation has so much 'catching up' to do that the real choice that presents itself soon is the following one: one either spends ones entire life just reading all the classics, or one preten...
A word of warning here. The events as you remember them will never be the same in your memory once you have turned them into a memoir. For years I have worried that if I turn all of my life into literature, I won't have any real life left - just stor...
Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questio...
My dis-interest in what people speak of as "women's problems," "women's literature." Have women a special sensibility? No. There are individuals uniquely talented & uniquely equipped to interpret the complex symbolism of the world but they are certai...
Jack: Listen, man. Cammi gets off in an hour, so I was thinking I'd just hang around and have a drink, and make sure she gets home safe. Miles Raymond: You're joking, right? Jack: No. Miles Raymond: Un-fucking-believable. Can't we just... go back to ...
You always know more than you think you know without being aware of it. You always remember best what has hurt most. Memory is a reflex of the pain. Knowledge is the memory of the pain combined with the unconsciousness which we 'rationalize' via drea...
The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.
To most Americans, a dog is a potential mate. To some Chinese, a dog is potential meat.
Longevity-and sanity. Eccentric old ladies on Harleys I can deal with.
It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.
Prom has all the elements of a popular story. It reeks of all-Americanness, tension, drama. It has romance. Pretty dresses. Dancing. Limos. High school. Coming of age.
American nuclear reactors are well into middle age. The median age of an operating reactor in the U.S. is 34 years, placing start-up in midst of the Carter administration.
Everyone matures. When I was Newt's age, I thought I had the right answer to things. The baby-boomers as political leaders are still on trial by the American people.
If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.
I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.
