Love between women could take on a new shape in the late nineteenth century because the feminist movement succeeded both in opening new jobs for women, which would allow them independence, and in creating a support group so that they would not feel i...
At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2011, as died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that black day. The terrorist attacks led to trillions of dollars b...
What a shame," signed the Dodecahedron. "They're so very useful. Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder D...
Back inside, I’m shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs. The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I’m...
Once it happens you can’t remember how you started out: innocent, barreling into the tunnel, shooting out at each station like a dolphin out of a dim green pool. Pneumatic doors inhale open, puff shut, lock with a solid thump. Up and down the line,...
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be t...
Lutie Naylor: [the stranger has bought a round for the house] Let's see, one round for the house plus the smoke; that comes to about eight dollars and fifty cents. Sheriff Dan Shaw: [chuckling] There's no charge Lutie; you were at the meeting, anythi...
Joseph Goebbels: [in German; subtitled] How many seats in your auditorium? Francesca Mondino: [translates into French] Shosanna Dreyfus: [in French; subtitled] Three hundred and fifty. Francesca Mondino: [translates into German] Joseph Goebbels: That...
Neal: I'd like one room for the night. Del: If you're upset, maybe we should get separate rooms. Neal: You get your own room. Hotel Clerk: Will you be paying with credit card? Neal: Yes. I have a Visa card... Diner's Club card... and a gasoline card....
[Turgidson advocates a further nuclear attack to prevent a Soviet response to Ripper's attack] General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. No...
Brad Dupree: ...so I'm sure you can understand the need to cut corners around here. Lester Burnham: Sure. Times are tight, and you need to free up cash. Gotta spend money to make money. Brad Dupree: Exactly. Lester Burnham: Like when our editorial di...
Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules... afternoons are best, but I'm too lethargic for any real regime. When I'm in the flow of something I can do a reg...
I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?' Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good a...
I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change that badge that I wear, but you can’t change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, i...
Lance rolled his eyes. “I’m already sorrier than you could possibly imagine. Now you promise me you won’t interfere, or mention it to anyone, or poke your nose in, or follow Mr. Traynor along the street when he comes into town,...” Lily snort...
I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary f...
A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to he...
The sky [above Tehran] was like a star-eaten black blanket, and so far as I could read them its constellations were unfamiliar. Lawrence speaks somewhere of drawing 'strength from the depths of the universe'; Malcolm Lowry speaks about the deadness o...
Government advocate: General Dyer, is it correct that you ordered your troops to fire at the thickest part of the crowd? Gen. Dyer: [righteous tone] That is so. Government advocate: One thousand five hundred and sixteen casualties with one thousand s...
Mr. Potter: [on the telephone] George, there is a rumor around town that you closed your doors. Is that true? [pause] Mr. Potter: Oh, well, I'm very glad to hear that. George, are you all right? Do you need any police? George Bailey: Police? What for...
We also fought about everything -- like real sisters. We fought about money, bedrooms, whose car to take. Everyone of these fights was actually about something else -- usually abandonment. I wanted to be first on her list and she wanted to be first o...
