In response to a a comprehensive VA survey taken in 1980, 91% of respondents who had seen combat in Vietnam reported that they were glad they had served their country. A healthy 80% disagreed with the statement that the US took advantage of me. Two o...
We rode through a three-thousand-year-old country, saw the ruined capital of the Queen of Sheba and the underground red-rock city of Lalibela, fraternized with a tribe of leaden-skinned troglogytes living among the mountains, scrapped with brigands, ...
In Soviet times, the border was closed, so we couldn't get out of the country, and I had been reading Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to see the ocean, I wanted to see boats, I wanted to see black people, because we didn't have that in the Soviet Union. I ...
I've been many times to Dubai and the U.A.E., and I have friends that live there. It would be exciting to stage world heavyweight championship fights in the Arab world. It's something Muhammad Ali achieved when he fought in Zaire or the Philippines. ...
The idea that you can dress up in some kind of a fake Indian outfit and get on stage is somehow acceptable in this country. That has to do with the fact that you have the Redskins, the Braves, you have people who dress up like Indians, people dress u...
I often have said to people that there are really two cities in the country where the outlook is always forward-looking - there is never really a backward-looking tendency. My banking work has taken me out to Palo Alto, what is commonly called Silico...
Much as Cold War nuclear strategists could argue about winning a nuclear war by having more survivors, advocates of a Global Warming War might see the United States, Western Europe, or Russia as better able to ride out climate disruption and manipula...
Since World War II, most of the conflicts in the world have been internal conflicts. The weapon of choice in those wars has all too often been landmines - to such a degree that what we find today are tens of millions of landmines contaminating approx...
Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music. If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't ta...
When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of...
It never was about the musician or the instrument - it was about the laser notes in a hall of mirrors, the music itself. It was going to change the world for the better and it has. Maybe not as fast or as much as we wanted, but it has and it still wi...
Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it. It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive mo...
At the end of our visit, Fleisher agreed to play something on my piano, a beautiful old 1894 Bechstein concert grand that I had grown up with, my father's piano. Fleisher sat at the piano and carefully, tenderly, stretched each finger in turn, and th...
But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements—alimony and acrimony—the songs startled him and regained all their previous, pre-Rachel meanings, ...
He watched in awe as she stacked up an enormous armload of music. "There," she finished, slapping Frank Zappa's Greatest Hits on top of the pile. "That should do for a start." "You are a music lover," said the wide-eyed cashier. "No, I'm a kleptomani...
Think of music as being a great snarl of a city [...]. In the years I spent living there, I came to know its streets. Not just the main streets. Not just the alleys. I knew shortcuts and rooftops and parts of the sewers. Because of this, I could move...
[longer introduction to "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"] Narrator: And now we're going to hear a piece of music that tells a very definite story. As a matter of fact, in this case, the story came first and the composer wrote the music to go with it. It's...
[telling young Sonarman Beaumont about Jones's most embarrassing moment] Watson: Seaman Jones here is into music in a big way, and he views this whole boat as his own personal, private stereo set. Well, one day he's got this piece of Pavarotti... Sea...
Carson Wells: [sitting by bed] Buenos Dias. I'm guessing this isn't the future you had planned for yourself when you first clapped eyes on that money. Don't worry, I'm not the man who's after you. Llewelyn Moss: [in bed] I know that. I've seen him. C...
Carla Jean Moss: [the cab is stopped outside the depot. Carla Jean and her mother and the driver are at the trunk struggling over bags] I got it Mama. Carla Jean's Mother: I didn't see my Prednisone. Carla Jean Moss: I put it in, Mama. Carla Jean's M...
Music originated from God and was created solely for his worship, his glory, and his pleasure.