[after dropping through the ceiling on a rope and killing nine mobsters] Connor: Well, "Name one thing you're gonna need this stupid fucking rope for." Murphy: That was way easier than I thought. Connor: Aye. Murphy: You know, on TV you always got th...
[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop...
Give at least fifteen minutes everyday to reading. Sometimes, we spend a lot of time watching television - surfing through channels; not really watching anything in particular. Fifteen minutes out of that time is not a big deal. Soon you will find yo...
Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way throug...
People spend thousands of dollars on stereos. Sometimes tens of thousands. There is a specialist industry right here in the States which builds stereo gear to a standard you wouldn't believe. Tubed amplifiers which cost more than a house. Speakers ta...
She led him past the engine room, which looked like a very dangerous, mechanized jungle gym, with pipes and pistons and tubes jutting from a central bronze sphere. Cables resembling giant metal noodles snaked across the floor and ran up the walls. �...
The President is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the President on a golf course. If Eisenhowe...
The only thing worse than his arrogance was his incompetence. He was a bully, behaving like an ass. I saw Angel though, not him. The memorial was right there, just outside the window. It’s in the flowers, and it makes me angry. Angel liked to sit o...
Not accomplishing your Life Plan is a tragic act of free will. It is akin to charting an elaborate vacation itinerary before arriving at your holiday destination, with all kinds of plans for outdoor adventures and intentions to go sightseeing and sho...
An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder...
It’s funny how we think life works a certain way because of TV and movies. Most people don’t really think about how scripts are edited and how people get to practice their lines and rehearse. If one doesn’t get it right they get to redo the sce...
Books have survived television, radio, talking pictures, circulars (early magazines), dailies (early newspapers), Punch and Judy shows, and Shakespeare's plays. They have survived World War II, the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the fall of...
Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard a...
Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generatio...
I start thinking about what happened and then I start thinking about why I'm still here. It's pointless. They say on TV that the soldiers want to be there? I can't speak for every soldier, but I think if people went around and made a list of names of...
We might think we know how we are being affected by the media—a book, a movie, a TV series. Ironically, this so-called awareness, the “third person effect,” is most common with, according to Gierzynski, “those with higher education.” He not...
...Oh God. I'm one of those girls." "What girls?" he asked, perplexed. " girls. The ones in all those books and TV shows. Some dumb high school girl falls in love with some supernatural guy, and he's all, 'Behold, I am five million years old!' and sh...
Because even among contrarians, I’m a contrarian. But all of this is just words of bronze, third place rhetoric. What do I really mean when I say we want to shock society into awareness? Do we mean we want more originality and individuality? Less T...
The serious reader in the age of technology is a rebel by definition: a protester without a placard, a Luddite without hammer or bludgeon. She reads on planes to picket the antiseptic nature of modern travel, on commuter trains to insist on individua...
try to visualize all the streams of human interaction, of communication. All those linking streams flowing in and between people, through text, pictures, spoken words and TV commentaries, streams through shared memories, casual relations, witnessed e...
You are really and truly and completely free. There is no kicker. There is no if, and, or but. You are free. You can do it right or wrong. You can obey or disobey. You can run from Christ or run to Christ. You can choose to become a faithful Christia...
