I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minor...
Katherine is the master of anger; she dominates anger. She takes anger in her hands and twists its neck, ripping its head off. She throws anger against the wall and stomps it to death. Her voice rises, it changes, it conjures up ghosts and cusses in ...
There were adventure stories supplied with cloths for mopping your brow, thrillers containing pressed leaves of soothing valerian to be sniffed when the suspense became too great, and books with stout locks sealed by the Atlantean censorship authorit...
I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close. And I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine, and a gorgeous shade of toast. The stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like ...
In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside...
If T. S. Eliot had stayed in St Louis, he would never have held that April was the cruelest month. Well, unless he was a Browns fan. At this moment, in the ragged middle of February, it begins: beneath the snow, roots quicken. In the Deep South, alre...
All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whisperin...
One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the best organized a...
If there is a place in heaven for Labrador Retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle - a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can ...
People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they’ve woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I’ll be...
Zeus: Morning. John McClane: Good morning. Zeus: You having a nice day, sir? You feeling all right? Not to get too personal, but a white man standing in the middle of Harlem wearing a sign that says "I hate niggers" has either got some serious person...
Sergeant Milton Warden: [Prewitt and Warden are sitting in the middle of a road, very drunk] There's this girl, and she wants me to be... wants me to be... Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: Be what? Sergeant Milton Warden: An officer! Can you believe tha...
Arthur: Where were you? What happened to you? Cobb: Got blocked by a freight train. Arthur: [to Ariadne] Why would you put a train course in the middle of a downtown intersection? Ariadne: Why, I didn't. Arthur: Where did it come from? Cobb: Let me a...
Alfred P. Doolittle: The old bloke died and left me four thousand pounds a year in his bloomin' will. Who asked him to make a gentleman out of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everyone for money when I wanted it, same as I touched h...
[last lines] Penny Wharvey McGill: Well, we need that ring. Ulysses Everett McGill: Well that ring is at the bottom of a pretty durn big lake. Penny Wharvey McGill: Uh-uh. Ulysses Everett McGill: A 9,000 hectare lake. Penny Wharvey McGill: I don't ca...
Henry Luce: Now, I want them all to meet my people who will write their true stories, Naturally these stories will appear in Life magazine under their own bylines: For example, "by Betty Grissom", or "by Virgil I. Grisson", or... Gus Grissom: Gus! He...
John: Hello, Paul. You are a perfectly healthy, sane and middle-class male yet last month you ran a straight razor across your wrist. Did you cut yourself because you truly wanted to die or did you just want some attention? Tonight, you'll show me. T...
Jeanine Pettibone: [following the disastrous Stonehenge performance] If it got solved, that would be alright, but it doesn't get solved. I mean what do you think happened out there? What got solved tonight? Ian Faith: For one thing that goes wrong......
Robert Hitchins: You don't understand. If we go back, they'll swamp the boat, they'll pull us right down, I'm tellin' you! Molly Brown: Knock it off. You're scaring me. C'mon girls! Grab an oar, let's go! Robert Hitchins: Are you out of your mind? We...
[Withnail and Marwood are lying in bed together, listening to a man coming inside the cottage. Withnail is cowering under the covers] Withnail: [whispering] He's going into your room. It's you he wants. Offer him yourself. [the bedroom door slowly op...
Tallahassee: Goddamn it, Bill fucking Murray! I had to get that out. I don't mean to gush. This is so surreal. I mean, you probably get this all the time. Maybe not lately, but I'm such a huge fan of yours. You know, I swear, I've seen every one of y...