As he watched Joe stand, blazing, on the fire escape, Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of weather, the pang of creation. The desire he felt, watching Joe,...
In fact, Wen'an was the prefect location for the scrap-plastics trace: it was close, but not too close, to Beijing and Tianjin, two massive metropolises with lots of consumers and lots of factories in need of cheap raw materials. Even better, its tra...
To seek the self, one must first have a clear idea of what one is looking for. Thus, some meditation manuals advise actively cultivating the sense of self, despite the fact that this sense is the target of the analysis. Our sense of identity is often...
As Donilon [President Obama's security advisor] would tell me, Obama said: "Here's the deal. I want this hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to come to the front of the line. I worry that the trail has gone cold. This has to be our top priority ...
Gru: We have located a shrink ray in a secret lab. And once we take this shrink ray, we will have the capability to pull off the TRUE crime of the century! [in a sinister tone] Gru: We... are going to steal... [the minions pull out their weapons] Gru...
[Enid is chatting to Rebecca who is working behind the counter at a coffee shop. An eccentrically dressed man in a motorized wheelchair comes up] Feldman, the Wheel Chair Guy: Excuse me... I can't read the trivia question. Enid: [reading out the dail...
[creates a whole new location out of two mirrors] Cobb: Very impressive. [notices Mal; flashback of himself and Mal on the same bridge] Cobb: I know this bridge. This place is real, isn't it? Ariadne: Yeah, I cross it everyday on the way to the colle...
When I was done raking and bagging, I banged on the door and demanded entry /...let me in by the hair on your chinny, chin-chin/ (a fairytale moment there) Dick opened it and in his posthest voice, said that before he could possibly consider letting ...
For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and outrages of a mob of deranged half-wits, an experience from which he supposed he should have emerged a better person...
Have you ever seen someone buy a piece of furniture or clothing from New York, Chicago or London? Even though the exact same product was available right down the street at a local retailer for a fraction of the cost? This kind of phenomenon is referr...
The jogger sighed. He pulled out his phone and my eyes got big, because it glowed with a bluish light. When he extended the antenna, two creatures began writhing around it-green snakes, no bigger than earthworms. The jogger didn't seem to notice. He ...
As many as thirty or as few as ten years later, lying exhausted and still, eyes open in the dark long after the three suns of Rakhat had set, no longer bleeding, past the vomiting, enough beyond the shock to think again, it would occur to Emilio Sand...
I felt I was in the loneliest place in the world, and I was apprehensive. Nothing could be heard except the occasional crash of an unknown creature in the forest, and, once in awhile, a deep thrumming similar to the lowest barely audible sound of a s...
In the end Navidson is left with one page and one match. For a long time he waits in darkness and cold, postponing this final bit of illumination. At last though, he grips the match by the neck and after locating the friction strip sparks to life a f...
When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, a...
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...
I used disbelieve in fate, but now I realize that it exists. I still do not believe that it is written in somewhere by any supernatural being. It is our brain, our fate is hidden in our brain. We cannot do anything in strict sense of term, our brain ...
Lt. Nyota Uhura: [Having just learned that she is assigned to the Farragut] Commander, a word? Spock: Yes, Lieutenant? Lt. Nyota Uhura: Was I not one of your top students? Spock: Indeed you were. Lt. Nyota Uhura: [the scene cuts to another location, ...
John Connor: [holds up robot arm] Will this melt in the lava? The Terminator: Yes, Throw it in. John Connor: Adios! [John hurls the arm into the steel] The Terminator: And the chip. Sarah Connor: [in relief] It's over. The Terminator: No. There is on...
Nick Fury: [having discovered a security breach] What are you doing, Mr Stark? Tony Stark: Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about you. Nick Fury: You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract! Bruce Banner: We are! The model's locked and we'r...
[in a Drive-In, in 1955. The theater screen shows a still picture of a group of Native Americans riding horse in a desert] Young Doc: All you have to do is drive the time vehicle directly toward that screen accelerating to 88 miles an hour. Marty McF...