He dragged me back - just in time. A tree had crashed down on to the side walk, just missing us. Poirot stared at it, pale and upset. "It was a near thing that! But clumsy, all the same - for I had no suspicion - at least hardly any suspicion. Yes, b...
Wasting talent is a sin. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. I’m not big on sin, but I know a sin when I see one staring me in the face. It’s just not courteous to not use or wear something that somebody�...
The longing for improvement and the fear of waste and worse - it is a pattern still with us, and maybe it speaks to the medium's essential marriage of light and dark, or as Mary Pickford put it in her autobiography (published in 1955), Sunshine and S...
She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side...
Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly witho...
Sometimes I come up here at night, even when I'm not fixing the clocks, just to look at the city. I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they ne...
Darling Daddy, Poor Saffy. She had a big fight in the boys toilets on Monday, did you know? A very big fight and Sarah helped and it was terrifying. Said a boy in my class who has a brother who was there. Saffy washed her hands and said Never Ever Ne...
While National Geographic magazine had given me a taste of the world, the three-dimensional details of this moment - the tickle of the rain drops, the suck sound of my feet in the mud, the challenge of getting photographs of the monkeys, my immature ...
When we saw a destitute-looking man trying to sell worn flip-flops, I vowed never to complain about a job again. When I considered the steady paycheck and quality of life it provided, my past gripes - primarily boring meetings, back-biting office pol...
For the rest of my life, Zanzibar will be the Swahili word for rain. The rain would drizzle, spit, mist, downpour, shower, torrent, gust, deluge and blast. At one point it hit the ground so hard it created a haze as it bounced back up two feet and fe...
I thought of a sign I had seen... another scary time, when I was two hundred feet up in a giant karri tree in South West Australia. At the point where the precarious spiral ladder grew even steeper and narrower to reach the fire-watch platform atop t...
Anyway, it was big and I set up the trickiest structure. Accounts all over the world and money flying around like... The right mix of drugs and Remy Martin. Like a big whirl of light and money, pulsating like it was alive, like one of those glowing j...
Watch carefully the children around you. In precious moments you will catch a glimpse of your Savior’s face. Listen intently and you will hear his voice. Walk gently among them; his footprints are all around you. Embrace them, for you are embracing...
If you think you have big problems - and you are looking for more big problems - you will definitely have a lot of them. Instead of giving yourself a nervous breakdown when a difficult situation arises, put the situation into proper perspective. In t...
Bumper Sticker Guy: [running after Forrest] Hey man! Hey listen, I was wondering if you might help me. 'Cause I'm in the bumper sticker business and I've been trying to think of a good slogan, and since you've been such a big inspiration to the peopl...
Big Joe: [shouting to the captured German Colonel] Look! We're not worried about the German army, we've got enough troubles of our own. To the right General Patton, to the left the British Army, to the rear our own goddamn artillery, and besides all ...
Guido: [pretending to translate] The game starts now. You have to score one thousand points. If you do that, you take home a tank with a big gun. Each day we will announce the scores from that loudspeaker. The one who has the fewest points will have ...
Zazu: [singing] Nooooobody knows the trouble I've seen. / Nooooobody knows my sorrow. Scar: Oh, Zazu, do lighten up. Sing something with a little *bounce* in it. Zazu: [singing] It's a small world after all... Scar: NO! No. *Anything* but that! Zazu:...
Jack Crabb: Grandfather, I have a white wife. Old Lodge Skins: You do? That's interesting. Does she cook and does she work hard. Jack Crabb: Yes, Grandfather. Old Lodge Skins: That surprises me. Does she show pleasant enthusiasm when you mount her? J...
Old Lodge Skins: Let's go back to the teepee and eat, my son. My new snake wife cooks dog very well. Jack Crabb: All right, Grandfather. Old Lodge Skins: She also has a very soft skin. The only trouble with snake women is they copulate with horses, w...
General Custer: A scout has a certain look... Kit Carson, for example. You look like... a muleskinner! Jack Crabb: Uh, General I don't know anything about mules... General Custer: Lieutenant, it's amazing how I can guess the profession of a man just ...