For me, art in our time is strongest when it is aware of science, includes science, is inspired by science, or is about science. On the linguistic level, the new words coined by scientists to describe their new discoveries form a giant growing lexico...
There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move...
What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson’s corridors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Myst-like discoveries thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? Or better yet: what is exciting...
If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, inter changeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, woul...
In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving ev...
Involvement with the eight worldly dharmas keeps beings imprisoned in the realms of samsara and renders them susceptible to the hosts of emotions. The eight worldly dharmas are: praise and blame, gain and loss, fame and disgrace, happiness and suffer...
It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be...
Borges is particularly stimulating to a man who works in the cinema, because the unusual thing about his writing is that it is like a dream, extraordinarily farsighted in calling up from the unconscious complete images in which the thing itself, and ...
The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed...But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder...
Science accepts only facts that are available only through our brain and sense organs. What would happen, if we had more complex brain design and more complicated sense organs? Only imagine more active and differently functioning neurons of our brain...
The ultimate goal of the political elite is to privatize the air. So as not to destroy their own edifice of democratic compassion they will make provisions for the sick and the poor. Air will be rationed by a privatized bureaucracy and only those who...
Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things—like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. One night in Hiroshima it occurred to me that the moon behind a certain ...
Charlie Chaplin: That's not what dogged me, George. It wasn't that. Charlie Chaplin: It was... it was the knowledge that if you did what I did for a living-if you were a clown-and you had a passion to tell a particular kind of story... something... b...
Ray Vargo: Did you try to follow the bird? Put a bug on it? Anything like that? Louie: No, I never had a reason to do anything like that. Like I said I realize that the arrangement I made with this guy is pretty weird, but he's always shown me comple...
Professor Snape: A remarkable feat, don't you think? To enter the castle on ones own, completely undetected? Dumbledore: Quite. Professor Snape: Any theories on how he might have managed it? Dumbledore: Many. Each as unlikely as the next. Professor S...
[last lines] Mickey: You know, I was talking to your father before, and I was telling him that it's ironic I, I - used to always have Thanksgiving with Hannah, and I never thought that I could love anybody else. And here it is years later and I'm mar...
Crown Prince Leopold: Has he tricked you? Is that it? Chief Inspector Uhl: No, Your Highness. Crown Prince Leopold: Then why are you failing me? I thought I could trust you. I thought you were a man I could bring with me when I took the throne. Am I ...
[Saito has been shot in the chest] Cobb: How's he doing? Ariadne: He's in a lot of pain. Cobb: When we get down to the lower levels, the pain will be less intense. Ariadne: And if he dies? Cobb: Worst case scenario? When he wakes up, his mind is comp...
[in Portuguese] Jamie: Good evening. Mr. Barros? Mr. Barros: Yes? Jamie: I am here to ask your daughter for her hands in marriage. Mr. Barros: You want to marry my daughter? Jamie: Yes. Mr. Barros: [yelling toward the back of the house] Come here, th...
Sebastian: This has got to be, without a doubt, the single most humiliating day of my life! [Ariel pats him on the head] Sebastian: I hope that you appreciate what I go through for you, young lady! Now, we got to make a plan to get that boy to kiss y...
Christian: Mademaiselle Satine, I haven't quite finished writing that new scene. The "Will The Lovers Be Meeting at the Sitar Player's Humble Abode" scene. And I wondered if I could work on it with you later tonight. The Duke: But, my dear, I've arra...
