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 ...
A Letter to Andre Breton, Originally Composed on a Leaf of Lettuce With an Ink-dipped Carrot On my bed, my green comforter draped over my knees like a lumpy turtle, I think about the Berlin Wall of years that separates us. In my own life, the years a...
When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my m...
John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat. Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable t...
Jane: [reading advertisement for a new nanny] "Wanted: a nanny for two adorable children." George Banks: Adorable. Well that's debatable, I must say. Jane: [singing] If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition... George Banks: Jane, I...
Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago and garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the gar...
It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the ...
People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs a...
Sometimes we dont value the good things that we have until their gone. We dont value friends we have until they left us. We dont value the jobs we have until we are unemployed. We dont value the partners that we love and we are in with in a relations...
Rufus T. Firefly: I'd be unworthy of the high trust that's been placed in me if I didn't do everything in my power to keep our beloved Freedonia in peace with the world. I'd be only too happy to meet with Ambassador Trentino, and offer him on behalf ...
Raoul Duke: Well, they've nailed me goddamnit. I'm trapped in some stinking desert crossroads called Baker. I don't have much time man, the fuckers are closing in! They'll hunt me down like a fucking beast! Dr. Gonzo: Whoa, getting a little paranoid?...
Wez: [after someone is killed] *No!* *No more talk!* We go in! We kill! Kill! We kill 'em! They kill us, we kill them! Kill 'em! Kill 'em! Kill! Kill! The Humungus: Be still my dog of war. I understand your pain. We've all lost someone we love. But w...
Captain Hadley: So this big shot lawyer calls me long distance from Texas. I say "Yeah?" He says, "Sorry to inform you, but your brother just died." Guard Mert: Oh damn, Byron, I'm sorry to hear that. Captain Hadley: I'm not, he was an asshole. Ran o...
