Everything was temporary; she understood that now. All of this was temporary. It would all be snatched away. It was all on loan. Even the people we love. They were all on loan. One day you see their face across a rickety table or you pass them hurryi...
Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills over. There is a brown pool on the table--it is running among your books and papers. Now you mop it up, clumsily, with your pocket-hankerchief. You th...
Simon's band never actually produced any music. Mostly they sat around in Simon's living room, fighting about potential names and band logos. She sometimes wondered if any of them could actually play an instrument. 'What's on the table?' 'We're choos...
Casey glanced at her plate again, recalling the posters of her elementary school lunchroom: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. So, how much you ate indicated the quantity of your desire. Walter was also implying that how quickly you got your food revealed the lik...
My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. 'I think it was very nice of Paul to give me this vase,' she once said,...
If I show up at your house ten years from now and find nothing in your living room but The Readers Digest, nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel, and nothing in your bathroom but Jokes for the John, I’ll chase you down ...
But something-luck, fate, conspiracy, whatever you want to call it-has thrown us together." He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving her face. "Of all the crazy places in the world, here we are, at the same table, in the same dirty Vietnamese cafe. ...
I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone…but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to u...
Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extrao...
When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in...
Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what s...
The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is consider...
The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if it’s something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it…Until r...
I come home from work this evening there was a note in the frying pan said Fix Your Own Supper Babe I Run Off With The Fuller Brush Man Well I sat down at the table screamed & hollered & cried I commenced to carring on 'till I almost lost my mind and...
I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Let them become the...
Donnie: You're such a fuck-ass! Rose Darko: Please. Elizabeth: What? Did you just call me a "fuck-ass"? Rose Darko: Elizabeth, that's enough. Elizabeth: You can go suck a fuck. Donnie: Oh, please, tell me, Elizabeth, how exactly does one suck a fuck?...
Billy Costigan: [to Frank Costello] You accuse me once, I put up with it. You accuse me twice... I quit. You pressure me to fear for my life and I will put a fucking bullet in your head as if you were anybody else. Okay? [Frank drops something. He re...
Richard M. Nixon: [awarding Forrest a U.S table tennis tournament medal in 1972] So, are you enjoying yourself in our nation's capital, son? Forrest Gump: Yes, sir. Richard M. Nixon: So where are you staying? Forrest Gump: Uh... it's called the hotel...
Graveyard Keeper: Yeah, you know every town has something like this happen... I remember over in Russellville, old Charlie Bowles, about fifteen years ago... One night, he finished dinner, and he excused himself from the table. He went out to the gar...
Harry Potter: What brings you here, sir? Horace Slughorn: [good-naturedly/drunkenly] Oh, the Three Broomsticks and I go way back! Farther back than I care to admit! Ho ho ho... Why I can remember when it was just ONE Broomstick! [Slughorn chuckles an...
[Playing cards at a table] Man: I told you I ain't got your money yet. Tat Lawson: The fuck you mean you ain't got my money yet? The fuck you *mean* you don't got my money *yet*? You best pay me my motherfuckin' money. Man: Fuck you, jack. Who the fu...