Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas: Susie, one of the longest borders on earth is right here between your country and mine. An open border. Fourteen hundred miles without a single machine gun in place. Yeah, I suppose that all sounds very corny to you. Susan...
To me, writing is a matter of voice. I think like that. The expression I sometimes use to myself is 'actual song.' That what I do is somewhere on the line between speaking to you as I am now and actual song. And the things I love when I say one of th...
Timothy Bryce: Gorbachev is downstairs. McDermott went to sign a peace treaty between the United States and Russia. He's the one behind Glasnost. Young Woman: He said he was in mergers and acquisitions. Timothy Bryce: You're not con-fused, are you? Y...
Real Toby: [looking at jellybeans on a tray] I think one might be lime. One might be like mint. Real Harvey: Well, what's the difference between this and this? Real Toby: One's cherry, one's cinnamon. Real Harvey: You can tell that by just looking at...
Enzo: ...So, between Mamma, Roberto and Alfredo, we yell and scream at each other all day long. Except for Angelica, she just cries. And then finally, we all end up kissing. Can you explain that to me? Because *that's* what love is all about. It's a ...
Ken: This morning, and this afternoon, we are doing what I want to do. Got it? Ray: Of course. Which, I presume, will involve culture. Ken: We shall strike a balance between culture and fun. Ray: Somehow I believe, Ken, that the balance shall tip in ...
Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of co...
I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between ...
Nixon is fascinating because he's our most alienated president. Everybody felt that they never knew who he was - that's palpable in the histories. His face is so cartoony that he's become this cartoon figure. I never really related to the romanticiza...
Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children...But the majority of men did not share the load at home. Some refused outright. Others refused more passively, ...
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book; And the South Wind, washing through the room, Makes the candles quiver. My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter, And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots Out...
On THE DECSIVE DUEL: SPITFIRE VS 109 The epic struggle between the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt 109 upon which so much of western civilization depended in the summer of 1940 has found the ideal biographer in David Isby. I write "biographer" because...
It's hard to tell the difference between how we want someone to feel about us and how we actually feel about them. If the person is attractive, we always want them to want us, and sometimes we get so busy trying to make that happen, we forget to keep...
I picked ducks in a tub in my dorm room. I'd hang deer in the doorway between the bedroom and the little living room in our little apartment there, and I'd skin my deer, and all the guts would go in the tub, and I'd sneak them out so my fellow studen...
The psychologist George Frankl atributes class structure and conflict and most of the ills of society to the sexual class war based on the Oedipul pattern; that is, murderous phallic conflict between males for the favour of the women, those favours b...
One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no lon...
... I find myself most drawn to: art that has arisen from a deeply personal conversation between the artist and the work at hand. It is art that walks perilously close to the Edge, that crosses the river of blood into Faerie, that flies so high it is...
An old Cherokee told his grandson, 'My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, em...
Look at a coin from your pocket. On one side is "heads" - the symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the other side is "tails" - the precise specification of the amount the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds u...
Nothing is so much coveted by a young man as the reputation of being a genius; and many seem to feel that the want of patience for laborious application and deep research is such a mark of genius as cannot be mistaken: while a real genius, like Sir I...
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence thr...
