Do you want to be with Dave for the rest of your life?” Then he rips off a piece of paper and picks up the smallest charcoal stick from my set. He writes something. He passes it over to me. It says: Time will tell. “And while you’re waiting,”...
People always ask me if I’m into sports, and I say, “Well, isn’t writing a sport? If you’re doing it right, and you have a deadline, you should be sweating.
Rob turned the rustling pages and grinned. 'Ach, she's writ here: "Oh, the dear Feegles ha' turned up again,"' he said. This met with general applause. 'Ach, what a kind girl she is tae write that,' said Billy Bigchin. 'Can I see?' He read: "Oh dear,...
Speaking one day to , on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of...
The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the unsolved problems of modern physics. We believe that any regression to the ideas of classical physics (as, for instance, to the use of the classical f...
I believe all people are assholes. You won't find anyone that you like. You'll just find someone you dislike a little less than the last asshole. And I can't wait for that day. To have a woman that I can say I dislike a little less than all the other...
The moment you realize that life will hurt more than your death. While existing, we're forced to become acquainted with sadness. There's no antibiotic for the ridding of distress, and no alleviation of these intervals of pain we must encounter. Behin...
The great thing about the Internet isn't that you can reconnect with old friends or stay up to date with developing world events or send pictures of newborns immediately around the world. It is simply that you can log on to jcpenney.com from anywhere...
Thank you so much for the rude know-it-all attitude while also having to look at your ridiculously colored hair and obnoxious facial and chest piercings. I am very fortunate to have just been schooled by someone who looks like they graduated from Car...
……, but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of ...
Although distortion of the past is widespread, the most common travesty is one of omission, wherein populist leaders neglect to mention the crimes committed by their own side or recollect them in such a way that evades accepting full responsibility. ...
In real life people do occasionally act out of character or do things we wouldn’t normally expect them to do. In fiction, there should be a good reason for a character to do something outside of the ordinary.
And secretly I fell prey to the one of the besetting sins of western intellectuals, which normally I abhor: I began to experience envy of suffering, that profoundly dishonest emotion which derives from the foolish notion that only the oppressed can a...
Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then you become good enough to improvise all the time. Writing is somewhat more like classical composition, where established forms and condi...
And what is written well and what is written badly...need we ask Lysias or any other poet or orator who ever wrote or will write either a political or other work, in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?" What is good, PhÊdr...
...But...to sing, to dream, to smile, to walk, to be alone, be free, with a voice that stirs and an eye that still can see! To cock your hat to one side, when you please at a yes, a no, to fight, or- make poetry! To work without a thought of fame or ...
The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another...
If you find yourself pulled beyond all practicality toward doing something -- writing poetry, building a business, restoring old cars, planting a secret garden; if at four in the morning the right word comes to you, the perfect flower to plant in tha...
What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good. And -- though played out forms can throw up miraculous sports like The Importance of Being Earnest or Decline and Fall-- what is good is always what is new, in both form ...
Sometimes when I visit schools, kids will interview me for the school newspaper. They ask me questions and my answers tend to go on and on, and they try to write down everything I'm saying as quickly as they can. And one day, a kid holds up her hand ...
Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live ...
