In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers ...
Within her presence, I had once been used to feeling—trembling—wonder, dissolution; but that was long ago. Still, though my soul, now she was veiled, could not see her directly, by way of hidden force that she could move, I felt the mighty power ...
Certainly, the great record of forced labor across the South demands that any consideration of the progress of civil rights remedy in the United States must acknowledge that slavery, real slavery, didn't end until 1945 - well into the childhoods of t...
There is nothing like the moment you connect with a reader! Nothing like the response that you get when what you have written touches someone in some way. It's a moment in which your work is almost a co-creation, you and the reader joining forces to ...
What was destiny? What was the power that shaped the patterns and attempted to enforce them? God? Should she be raging at God - or begging Him to let her son live and to spare her from the life of a cripple? Or was the power behind destiny merely a n...
Miracles are commonplace in religious scripture. Our ancient ancestors are said to have felt Jesus' wounds, verified Muhammad's ascent to heaven, and even interacted with their respective deities directly. Today, believers have no such luxury. They a...
A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. Most important of all, we should not assume that having to yield to th...
Please don't think that I am one of those squishy types who can't handle reality. I have plenty of real-world things to deal with all the time. I have deadlines, meetings, I answer the phone, I get turned down, I wait in lines and am forced to pass f...
Because I spend so much time traveling, I tend to do most of my reading on the same iPad on which I write. For me, it's words, not paper, that matter most in the end. This practice has had the additional benefit of greatly reducing the time I spend s...
I was born in Brazil and grew up in the '70s under a climate of political distress, and I was forced to learn to communicate in a very specific way - in a sort of a semiotic black market. You couldn't really say what you wanted to say; you had to inv...
Trautman: You picked the wrong man to push. Teasle: No, Trautman. HE picked the wrong man! Trautman: That boy's a *heart attack*! He may be the best the Special Forces ever trained. Anything *you're* gonna throw at him, he's been through a hundred ti...
Gandalf: My lord! Dispatch this force to Ravenhill, the Dwarves are about to be overrun! Thorin must be warned! Thranduil: By all means, warn him. I have spent enough Elvish blood in defense of this accursed land. No more! [leaves] Gandalf: [desperat...
Albus Dumbledore: [talking about Tom Riddle in the Great Hall] Every day, every hour, this very minute, perhaps, dark forces attempt to penetrate this castle's walls. [pause] Albus Dumbledore: But in the end, their greatest weapon... is you.
Virginia 'Pepper' Potts: [upon seeing Stark wearing a machine around his arm] I thought you said you were done making weapons? Tony Stark: It isn't. This is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless. [Stark is blasted back by the force of the mac...
Elrond: You ride to war, but not to victory. Sauron's armies march on Minas Tirith, this you know. But in secret he sends another force which will attack from the river. A fleet of Corsairs ships sails from the south. They reach the city in two days.
Superintendant: I don't like forcing the pace to extract confessions or get information. I'm very liberal, a great believer in the liberty of the individual... in people's right to live as they choose. Provided that the way of life they choose harms ...
Saruman: If the wall is breached, Helm's Deep will fall. Wormtongue: Even if it is breached, it will take a number beyond reckoning, thousands, to storm the keep. Saruman: Tens of thousands. Wormtongue: But, my lord, there is no such force. [they go ...
Marcy Dawson: [to Max] You don't understand it, do you? I don't give a shit about you! I only care about what's in your fucking head! If you won't help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and...
Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl: In 15 minutes, we meet with the Fuhrer. He will want to know how you intend to deal with Patton's forces. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: I will attack and annihilate him...! [long pause] Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: ...before he do...
[Ray is recording "Georgia on my Mind"] Margie Hendricks: Listen to that crap. I thought you said ABC wasn't gonna force nothing on him. Jeff Brown: They didn't. It was Ray's idea. Something new. Margie Hendricks: What are we then, Jeff? Something ol...
A woman at the Limited once asked me, 'Why do you work?' She said, 'You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?' I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, 'You know why? Because I think that if ...
