Anyone who has lived here for long enough has seen it all before: opposing sides of the political spectrum ferociously criticising each other, getting hot under the collar about this and that, bringing up all sorts of allegations and innuendos. Then ...
I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be totally stumped and have writer's block. We will see. Writing is very convenient, h...
In Book III, which deals with morals, I have also passed over some things but for a different reason. Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War, I have had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhorta...
Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and humanity-and-Earth-conside...
Mason: I finally figured it out. It's like when they realized it was gonna be too expensive to actually build cyborgs and robots. I mean, the costs of that were impossible. They decided to just let humans turn themselves into robots. That's what's go...
Lowell Bergman: You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witne...
[...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only...
You always know more than you think you know without being aware of it. You always remember best what has hurt most. Memory is a reflex of the pain. Knowledge is the memory of the pain combined with the unconsciousness which we 'rationalize' via drea...
Did Cinderella wonder whether her prince would have cared for her had he first seen her in her everyday clothes? Did she believe the ladies of the palace were truly her friends or did she suspect they were just friendly because she was the princess a...
Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves our beginning to think about these things in a new wa...
Take your clothes off." "What?" "You heard me." Evelyn forced her mouth shut. She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its b...
I amazed myself, above all, with how well I was able to manage. Michel got to school on time, his teeth brushed and his clothes clean. More or less clean: I was less critical of a few spots on his trousers than Claire would have been, but then I was ...
She whimpered into his mouth and clung to his broad shoulders, rubbing her breasts against him to relieve the ache in her suddenly hypersensitive nipples. In answer, he took her deeper and rested more of his weight against her, that thick thigh betwe...
Have you ever seen Russian nesting dolls?” Thrown by the questions, she opened her eyes. Why would he suddenly speak about a child’s toy? “I own a few of them.” “Then you must understand that undressing you is like playing with one of those...
When she first saw him, she took him for a ghost. His jet-black hair fluttered in the breeze as he walked, letting her see his eyes. They seemed haunted, lost in some way. He was tall and gaunt, starkly pale in his black clothes. He was the very pict...
She remembered the way the damp, coarse sand had clumped to her legs and hands, and burrowed beneath her nails and into the folds of her clothes, and she had wondered why the British children in her storybooks were always excited about going to the b...
I'm tired of being scared, and I know you are too. Not that there isn't alot to be scared of in this world today, between the non-stop headlines about wars and nuclear power plants and terrorists and assasinations and civil unrest and economic uncert...
The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby activity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved at you arms without hands; legs without feet kicke...
The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. ...
A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. 'There are those,' he said gently, 'who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot kno...
For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not die he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space He does...
