Writing for the sake of writing, writing that draws its credibility from its very existence, is a foreign idea to most Americans. As a culture, we want cash on the barrel head. We want writing to earn dollars and sense so that it makes sense to us. W...
Sociologists argue that in contemporary Western society the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that historically were covenantal, including marriage. Today we stay connected to peo...
And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy. As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, ...
I was hungry when I left Pyongyang. I wasn't hungry just for a bookshop that sold books that weren't about Fat Man and Little Boy. I wasn't ravenous just for a newspaper that had no pictures of F.M. and L.B. I wasn't starving just for a TV program or...
I am Kian.” “Mercy ” she replied. Swallowing hard she forced her gaze away from him. She was being too bold in her perusal but she could not stop looking at him. “Kindness ” he whispered. Their eyes locked and Mercy felt a jolt of some fore...
There is a folk-tale about a shoemaker and his wife who were so poor that they had to send their many children out into the world to make a living. The lads went through many a perilous adventure but came home in the end, unscathed, to help their mot...
Tex: Boy oh boy, you picked a bad time to fly, Billy. They're guerrillas all over the place blowing up planes and all. They hit four planes in four days. But I guess you young people don't read the news anymore. That, and with our people back home ki...
Cartman: [singing] Well, Kyle's mom is a big, fat bitch, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world. She's a stupid bitch, if there ever was a bitch, she's a bitch to all the boys and girls. / On Monday she's a bitch, on Tuesday she's a bitch, o...
[last title cards] Title cards: Frank Lucas was convicted of Conspiracy to Distribute Narcotics and sentenced to 70 years. Title cards: Federal authorities confiscated over 250 million dollars of Frank's assets in U.S. and foreign banks. Title cards:...
You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing j...
Feeling at home anywhere on earth, and a foreigner even in the country where I was born, I consider myself an earthling, a citizen of the world. I love nature dearly and all creatures that contribute to make it what it is. I see the beauty in all exp...
No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in searc...
In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight on a jumbo jet and then thrown out with a parachute into a foreign landscape without a map: "There you are, the future patient...
...it is a different matter entirely to commit military resources to keep peace in such areas, where often no peace can be kept, or to build nations in our own image before they are ready for our freedoms - or even want them. The military need not do...
Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time t...
If you could travel anywhere in the US for a vacation, where would you go?" He reached up with his free hand and rubbed his jaw, two creases forming between his eyebrows. She wanted to take over for him, brush her fingers across his whiskers, make hi...
I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intellegent, and res...
When I was in London in 2008, I spent a couple hours hanging out at a pub with a couple of blokes who were drinking away the afternoon in preparation for going to that evening's Arsenal game/riot. Take away their Cockney accents, and these working-cl...
Raoul Duke: I want you to understand that this man at the wheel is my attorney. He's not just some dingbat I found on the strip, man. He's a foreigner. I think he's probably Samoan. But that doesn't matter, though, does it? Are you prejudiced? Hitchh...
Jimmy: So... Billy, what are you in for? Hash? Billy Hayes: Yeah. Jimmy: Where'd they get you? Billy Hayes: The airport... trying to get home. Jimmy: You go through customs? Billy Hayes: Yeah, I was busted right at the plane. Jimmy: Aw, man that's he...
Sick Boy: Good chips! Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: ...I can't believe you did that... Sick Boy: I got a good price for it! Rents I need the money! Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: IT WAS MY FUCKING TELLY! Sick Boy: Well, Christ. If I knew you were going to get so ...
