As a rule, we don't like to feel to sad or lonely or depressed. So why do we like music (or books or movies) that evoke in us those same negative emotions? Why do we choose to experience in art the very feelings we avoid in real life? Aristotle deals...
Dating is all about getting to know somebody, without wasting a lot of time or money. What is the price of love? You’ve got the cost of dinner, a movie, and cab fare for you and your date, as well as the entire film crew documenting your evening. S...
Night is the worst time. After the long regimentation of the day, the enforced silences, the men want to talk. At first it doesn’t matter what about: TV, movies, travel, jobs. I lie on my side on my mattress as the words pool around me, reciting to...
You really want my honest opinion?” I ask. Anton gestures for me to go on. “Please, this is why I hired you, devochka.” I detect a little hint of sarcasm, but I go ahead and say, “I hate restaurants like this.” “Why?” He seems genuinely...
He looked like every glossy frat boy in every nerd movie ever made, like every popular town boy who’d ever looked right through her in high school, like every rotten rich kid who’d ever belonged where she hadn’t. My mama warned me about guys li...
These religious types were the fans that Jesus seems to have the most trouble with. Fans who will walk into a restaurant and bow their heads to pray before a meal just in case someone is watching. Fans who won’t go to R-rated movies at the theater,...
...a bad diet will eventually kill our dreams. It's essential that we constantly evaluate the nutritional value of what we are feeding ourselves. It may come down to how many hours of television we're viewing, the quality of the programs we're watchi...
Love is an emotion that creeps up at you like darkness; you become wary watching love come at you like a scary movie with billows of black smoke, puffy like racing towards a doomed target. Love can also be like lounging on the beach, listening to the...
A novel works it's magic by putting a reader inside another person's life. The pace is as slow as life. It's as detailed as life. It requires you, the reader, to fill in an outline of words with vivid pictures drawn subconsciously from your own life,...
Lee Samson: Twentieth century games are really nice. Games nowadays are getting boring. I'm more into old school games like this one. Back then, games like these were enough for everyone. It's the same with hackers. It was better when there were few....
Bernie Rose: Did Shannon ever tell you how we met? Driver: No. Bernie Rose: I used to produce movies. In the 80s. Kind of like action films. Sexy stuff. One critic called them European. I thought they were shit. Anyway, he arranged all the cars for m...
[Opening line and sentences as movie started] Narrator: And God said Let there be light, and there was light. And from this light, God created life upon earth. And man was given diminion over all things upon this earth and the power to choose betweem...
[at a seminar, Charlie Kaufman has asked McKee for advice on his new screenplay in which 'nothing much happens'] Robert McKee: Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corru...
Bruce Wayne: [as Alfred opens the curtains] Bats are nocturnal. Alfred Pennyworth: Bats may be, but even for billionaire playboys, three o'clock is pushing it. The price of leading a double life, I fear. Your theatrics made an impression. [shows the ...
People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs a...
The movies make the brooding guy the hero – the guy with problems the guy who carries a gun, the gun with unresolved anger, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the guy who’s a vampire – and they tell you that you can have the mythical happy en...
I want to change my life...except I sort of like it. I mean, I couldn't be more delighted every Monday night after Fletch goes to bed when I come downstairs, pull up the Bachelor on TiVo, drink Riesling, and eat cheddar/port wine Kaukauna cheese with...
I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary f...
I dunno." She sat on the bench and hugged the robe like a pillow. "I still think that Brett guy is cute." "Good luck getting him away from Bekka." Cleo gathered her silky black hair into a high pony and pink-dabbed Smith's Rosebud Salve on her lips. ...
When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my m...
A Gift for You I send you... A cottage retreat on a hill in Ireland. This cottage is filled with fresh flowers, art supplies, and a double-wide chaise lounge in front of a wood-burning fireplace. There is a cabinet near the front door, where your fav...
