My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.
I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
History is made not simply with events, but by remembering those events, a double drumbeat like a heartbeat. History can be written not only with books but with ceremonies. Yet a real event read about in a newspaper is not always more important than ...
After some cogitation, it is difficult not to agree with Herman Bondi (1919 - 2005), who in his book 'Relativity and Common Sense' says: ... The surprising thing, surely, is that molecules in a gas behave so much as billiard balls, not that electrons...
A female magician named Catherine Trianon, who lived together 'as man and wife' with another cunning-woman, was described as having more learning 'in the tip of her finger' than others acquired in a lifetime. When her house was searched in 1680 twent...
That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.
President Merkin Muffley: I will not go down in history as the greatest mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler. General "Buck" Turgidson: Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American People than with your image in...
When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only ge...
I found a hair in my Campbell’s soup, and I’d love to talk to them about advancement opportunities for bald people. My love is as bald as an eagle, only not symbolic of the largest prison system in history. Freedom Soup sounds like a good name fo...
Last night I snuck an orchestra into the elevator at my apartment. We made elevator music history until Marvin got his oboe caught in the door and Mrs. Hoffstead started singing "Yes We Have No Bananas Today" in the hall so loud the police were calle...
To be honest, the core reason why I became an actor was that I didn't want to go to school. That's where it started. I hated opening my history books and my English books, but then, of course, you grow older. I went to film school in New York, and th...
If there’s a zeppelin, it’s alternate history. If there’s a rocketship, it’s science fiction. If there are swords and/or horses, it’s fantasy. A book with swords and horses in it can be turned into science fiction by adding a rocketship to ...
The books we read help to shape who we are. Reading offers us, as children, our first independence- allowing us to travel far beyond the confines of our immediate world. Books introduce us to great figures in history, narratives that stir our spirit,...
For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will sati...
I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
I don't plan ahead; each book finds me. History itself, the resonance of the past with the present, is the common denominator in all of them.
I'm not an overnight success. My early publishing history, through my first five books, was unfortunate in many respects, typified by a couple of short anecdotes.
When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.
It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book.
It's possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than 'Human Traces' and 'Devil May Care.' And that was really the attraction of it.
All people, even secular people, are seeing books on the market like The End of History.
