That's a large part of what economics is - people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology i...
I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.
Robots are like Mars: they need girls. Boys won't do; the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp when they should kiss and they're none too keen on having things shoved inside them... It's not a robot until you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like tha...
I find these comparisons particularly poignant: life versus death, hope versus fear. Space exploration and the highly mechanized destruction of people use similar technology and manufacturers, and similar human qualities of organization and daring. C...
Maybe that was why another part of me--a very small part--had wanted to kiss Wallace then. Both sides of his mouth, between his brows, and every other place those stupid worry lines marred his expression. That part of me had wanted to hold him tight ...
I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took ...
When his writing is going well, Gordon Strangle Mars likes to wake up at 6 a.m. and go out driving. He works out new plot lines about giant spiders and keeps an eye out for abandoned couches, which he wrestles into the back of his pickup truck. Then ...
I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,” and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “T...
The conception of marriage that he formed as a young person and envisioned as an adult has been marred by circumstances that he believes could have been overcome without divorce. Yet, he still believes in marriage— the commitments and promises…. ...
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings a...
[Evelyn Mulwray drives while Gittes reads an obituary from the newspaper] Jake Gittes: A memorial service was held at the Mar Vista Inn today for Jasper Lamar Crabb. He passed away two weeks ago. Evelyn Mulwray: Why is that unusual? Jake Gittes: He p...
From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's o...
Alma Jr., Age 13: Daddy, tell about when you rode broncs in the rodeo. Ennis Del Mar: Short story honey. Only 'bout three seconds I was on that bronc. Next thing I knew, I was flyin' through the air... only I wasn't no angel like you and Jenny here; ...
Irremediablemente, él nota el regusto de melancolía. De pronto los recuerdos acuden atropellándose: palabras breves como gemidos deslizándose por una piel desnuda, escorzo de líneas largas y suaves reflejadas sobre un espejo que multiplicaba el ...
THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS...
You’re going to have people who are going to say ‘Oh, you know like, she just writes songs about her ex-boyfriends’ and I think frankly that’s a very sexist angle to take. No one says that about Ed Sheeran. No one says it about Bruno Mars. Th...
Today we know more about Jupiter than the guy who lives next door to us. We can predict where an election will go, we can turn a gene on or off, and we can even send a robot to Mars, but we are lost if asked to explain or predict the phenomena we mig...
At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watch...
Two hundred Romans, and no one’s got a pen? Never mind!" He slung his M16 onto his back and pulled out a hand grenade. There were many screaming Romans. Then the hand grenade morphed into a ballpoint pen, and Mars began to write. Frank looked at Pe...
Why travel to the Moon or Mars if we only continue our wars there with Russia or China or Africa? Why build rockets at all? For fun? For adventure? Or is this the same process that sends the salmons back upstream year after year to spawn and die - a ...
-¿Pero cómo se te ocurrió cantar?- le pregunté. -Qué otra cosa se me iba a ocurrir si me habías tenido toda la tarde con el estribillo ese del verde que brota del mar, y la boquita de sangre marchita que tiene el coral. Me dormí repitiéndola ...
