All of Europe, as far as we knew, was gone. It might as well not be there anymore. Russia was gone. By the time you got to wondering where America went there just wasn't any more room for it in your brain. A world without America just couldn't happen...
All that remains of the garden city in our own day are traffic-free enclaves, islands in a sea of traffic where the pedestrian leads a legally protected by languishing existence, comparable to that of the North American Indians on their reservations....
The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Isl...
He imagined that he was looking for her and couldn't find her anywhere, that the two of them were lost on a vast ship, sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lyin...
As they left the pier and walked into the park, Chahda looked around appreciatively. "Nice place, this. Capital of New Caledonia. Big island, has 8,548 square mile, also has 53,245 peoples. Eleven thousand in Noumea. That is what says the Worrold Alm...
Now he realized the truth: that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power - to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibi...
The doctor from the mainland came and went. Silence settled over the island again, like a displaced curtain falling back in thickened, heavier folds. For there was a different quality in the silence now. It had tasted something, rich food on which it...
Because we live in a world under siege,” I say. “Life sucks for mages and magicians- taught me that. Bad things happen to those of us who get involved, but if we didn't fight, we'd be in an even worse state. None of it it’s your fault, any more...
Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel ...
If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that—in a wa...
What if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what's the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, ...
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The scien...
I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant ci...
Viking: Get to the ships! Stoick: No, no...! [the Green Death blasts the Viking ships, trapping the Vikings on the beach] Gobber: Smart, that one. Stoick: I was a fool. Lead the men to the far side of the island! Spitelout: Right! Stoick: Gobber, go ...
Max Jerry Horovitz: [to Mary] Dr. Bernard Hazelhof said if I was on a desert island, then I would have to get used to my own company - just me and the coconuts. He said I would have to accept myself, my warts and all, and that we don't get to choose ...
Peter Brand: It's about getting things down to one number. Using stats to reread them, we'll find the value of players that nobody else can see. People are over looked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws. Age, appearance, personality....
Bastian: I know books, I have 186 of them at home. Mr. Koreander: Ah, comic books. Bastian: No, I've read Treasure Island, The Last of the Mohicans, Wizard of Oz, Lord of the Rings, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Tarzan. Mr. Koreander: Whoa whoa whoa,...
Lily Sloane: [threatening with a phaser] You want to help me? Get me out of here! Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Alright. You want a way out? Here it is. [Picard opens window, revealing the Earth far, far below] Lily Sloane: What is this? Captain Jean-Luc ...
First Sgt. Edward Welsh: Everything a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can ...
For thousands of years humans were oppressed— as some of us still are— by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ion...
You are put in school to be trained to become exactly what they want you to be: not them, anything but them. They live on a golden island and have the key to the only bridge. Your parents are not millionaires, so it doesn't matter how intelligent you...
