I wanted to share the risks the digger in Afghanistan took every day. Whenever I could I joined patrols ‘outside the wire’, walking the same dusty tracks and fields as the ordinary soldiers. I did everything in my power to keep them alive, I fail...
It's not enough, is it? Just to follow; just to have faith in someone bigger and smarter and better informed. That's how we're built, that's how every Partial is wired - to follow orders and trust in our leaders - but it's not enough. It never has be...
The old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy ... a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick...
Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and superclusters, wheeling through ...
When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how ...
Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings...
One probably hears about it. One, wire, recognizes. One holds her bones up next to each other. One insists, grinding the clutch. One would powder and powder. One would ask out of the back of the throat. One refuses. One is so sad. One is helpful all ...
Beth had been a middle school science teacher and Joni was a librarian and they both had collections of weird stuff they had found. Bizarre, misspelled letters written by lovelorn eighth graders. Obscene Polaroids left in between the pages of library...
It’s possible that the reason I've never experienced a ghostly presence is that my temporal lobes aren't wired for it. It could well be that the main difference between skeptics (Susan Blackmore notwithstanding) and believers is the neural structur...
...the reward centers of the brain--where the pleasure of those high-calorie foods registers--also respond to other substances that bring about pleasure....But those reward centers also respond to other gratifying things, like watching a sunset or ex...
A woman's voice answered, "Hello?" Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh Lord, hello!" "This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the wire spool so she may call you when she returns...
Over the years our mother has beaten us with belts, shoes, rulers, extension cords, hair brushes, a wooden spoon, a fly swatter, a toilet brush, wire coat hangers, wooden coat hangers and sometimes one of our own toys. When you get whacked by your ow...
Through the Mud (from the book Blue Bridge) A line of robots, We approach a wall of mud, Some of us carrying flowers. The others laugh Bit when we enter that wall It is the flowers That will make us an ark To carry us on through the darkness, Sailing...
Ah, well! then the young woman was only in advance of the age," said Miss Archer; "and what with that and the telephone, and that dreadful phonograph that bottles up all one says and disgorges at inconvenient times, we will soon be able to do everyth...
Never miss an opportunity to learn another life skill. Just because you are an author or a doctor does not mean that you cannot learn carpentry, auto mechanics,electrical wiring, farming, or any other discipline. Each of these skills will give you th...
John Hammond: You know the first attraction I ever built when I came down south from Scotland? It was a Flea Circus, Petticoat Lane. Really quite wonderful. We had a wee trapeze, and a merry-go... carousel and a seesaw. They all moved, motorized of c...
Sgt. Barnes: Y'all take a good look at this lump of shit. Remember what it looks like. You fuck up in a firefight and I goddamn guarantee you a trip out of the bush in a body bag! Out here, assholes, you keep your shit wired tight at all times! [to T...
Jesse: I heard this story once about when the Germans were occupying Paris and they had to retreat back. They wired Notre Dame to blow, but they had to leave one guy in charge of hitting the switch. And the guy, the soldier, he couldn't do it. You kn...
I dreamt that I took William Burrough’s penis and tied it up with piano wire. I hung him like a Chagall painting…In the next part J.G. Ballard swam through streets of female urine. The girls read his book Crash and then mowed him down with their ...
The pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry ...
Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it ha...
