Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of...
I was taught how to tie up the loin with a butcher's looping knot and was so excited by the discovery that I went home and practiced. I told Elisa about my achievement. “I tied up everything,” I said. “A leg of lamb, some utensils, a chair. My ...
At the root of the tree at the heart of the world, With a chain round his neck, the Wolf lies curled. His gleaming teeth and jaws are furled, And the sun shall rise in the morning. His chain, it is forged of the nerve of a bear, Of the voice of a fis...
In de loop van de vijf, zes jaar dat ik in Rusland verbleef, ben ik een paar keer door diverse organisaties en individuen gedood dan wel doodverklaard. Teruggekeerd naar het vaderland kwam ik erachter dat ik drie keer ben opgehangen, twee keer doodge...
Sir Jonathan Tutt: So, you must be Simon. I'm the British Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jonathan Tutt. Well, this is it, ladies and gentlemen. This is the United Nations. We, sir, are in here. So, if there's anything you need, just give me a whistle. You...
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms ...
He wrote you a poem?" Evelyn looped her hand around Georgiana's arm and led the way to the chairs lining one side of the room. "He did." Grateful to see Luxley select one of the debutantes as his next victim, Georgiana accepted a glass of Madeira fro...
ALL HE COULD SEE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, WAS WATER. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. Slumped alongside ...
He leaned down, far enough that the dark ends of his hair brushed feather-light against her face, caught in her lashes, She had just enough time to take in a breath, to blink, to part her lips before he took them with his own. Time froze. Her heart c...
It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don’t mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will cat...
No matter how cleverly we disguise our anxieties they bear witness to the imperfect nature of the human heart. To be is to become. To become is not to be. We are a work-in-progress, incomplete, imperfect, unrealised, and by virtue of temporal actions...
Chad: Liza? Everyone is so hot for this paper, I just wanted to let you know. I'm about to run off another ten copies. Liza Weld: Just stop. Chad: It's like a Harry Potter book, if Harry Potter made people really, really angry. You're in hot water, y...
Lt. Gen. George Miller: My loyalty is to the kids. I am a soldier. Karen Clarke: You're not a soldier. Lt. Gen. George Miller: I've been a soldier my whole life! What do you mean I'm not a soldier? I'm a soldier! Look at the uniform - what, do you th...
Karen Clarke: What's going on there, Simon? Simon Foster: It's... It's departmental business. It's about a wall. Karen Clarke: Oh, Gaza? Simon Foster: Uh-huh. Karen Clarke: I'm wondering where you were in committee, Simon. I called for back-up and yo...
Toby Wright: Suzy, this is probably going to sound a bit odd under the circumstances, but... Suzy: A quickie? Toby Wright: No. Thank you, but no. It's about Liza. Liza wrote a paper, it's called PWIP PIP. Michael Rodgers: PWIP what? Toby Wright: PWIP...
He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back. He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sh...
On the edge of a tropical ocean, in a thousand reflections of the silver light of an invisible moon, among undulations of restless waters, ceaselessly changing... Among silent breakers, the tremors of the shining surface, in the swift flux and reflux...
Symptoms of illness and distress, plus your feelings about them, can be viewed as messengers coming to tell you something important about your body or about your mind. In the old days, if a king didn't like the message he was given, he would sometime...
Malcolm Tucker: All right now, my lovely friends, the bottom line is... Michael Rodgers: Oh, God, I hate that phrase. "Bottom line." I mean, we're not in retailing. Malcolm Tucker: Sorry. Michael's quite right. I won't use that again. The bottom line...
Tenoch: [after Tenoch discovers that Ana has cheated on him with Julio] How many times did you fuck her? Julio Zapata: Only once, we were really shitfaced Tenoch: When did you guys do it? Julio Zapata: I don't know Tenoch: When? Tell me when! Julio Z...
Look behind you now. Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful sense that something momentous is about to happen? ... Perhaps, then, this is the hour that Mary Hightower takes to the sky with thousands Afterlights headi...
