Innumerable conditions must be exquisitely optimized for the support of humanity and of civilization. Many of them are highly time variable. Evidence showing that a wide variety of independent conditions all reached optimality during the identical na...
She opened her eyes once again and let them drift across the scene laid out before her like a page from a storybook. Inky blackness hung above them as though painted in impasto in an opaque Prussian Blue. The impression it gave was of a sky hand-craf...
……, but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of ...
The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveler, as if...
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, t...
It is the most fun I’m ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there’s nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I’m so very bad at it. It’s the greatest peace when I’m in a scene, and it’...
...the long train ride was like traveling through limbo. You weren't anywhere when you were on a train, she decided. You weren't where you had been, and you weren't yet where you were going. You were nowhere. It might be beautiful outside the window-...
All of us know at least one drama queen or drama king. These people love to yell and make a scene when they’re offended. While all of that screaming might make them feel better in the short term, in the long term it does nothing for their careers o...
It seems kind of light for a dozen books. I think it's probably that unnatural number of Jason Statham DVDs you ordered." He has to have filmed a nude scene at some point in his career. I don't care how many shoot-'em-up action movies I have to watch...
I drank in the scene around me. Some people were directing traffic, some were throwing buckets full of water on the flames (the whole bucket too, not just the contents), some were snapping photos and one guy, I recognized as a regular of the Black Op...
The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell hea...
Picking my topics is sort of a process of elimination for me. Most things don't work for me. I like to cover science and unexpected things happening in labs. Also, theoretical research doesn't work for my style. I need scenes and interactions. Then, ...
We were brought up Protestant, and I went to church three times a day on a Sunday. My parents weren't Bible-bashers, but we all have a strong belief in God and a strong faith. We had a huge garden; our house was a bit like a scene from 'The Good Life...
I'm afraid that the act of writing is so scary and anxiety-filled that I never laugh at all. In fact, when people tell me that such and such a scene or story is comical, I tend to gape. I did not intend comedy - ever, as far as I know. It's probably ...
I think of rounds of editing as hammer time. Then, when they interrupt my writing, I can say... *shakes head* Nah, I just can't do it. Although when I come across a brilliant line, I do think, Can't touch this. And when I'm worried I'm overwriting a ...
It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the no...
Gen. Denton: I take it you don't deny your responsibility for the fact that on the night of April 14/15, a military establishment of the United States Army was the scene of a drunken party! At which no less than seven female civilians took an active ...
Klaus Detterick: [opening scene] [We see a large group of poor white men running through a meadow with shotguns and barking dogs following them] Klaus Detterick: [screen cuts to black] KATIE! CORA! William 'Wild Bill' Wharton: [whispers heavily] Ya l...
Remus Lupin: [Deleted scene] [Tonks comes running down a corridor, spies Lupin, and throws herself into his arms] Remus Lupin: You shouldn't have! Teddy needs you. Nymphadora Tonks: He'll sleep till dawn and snore like his father. It's you who needs ...
[viewing the crime scene of Leo Crow's murder] Danny Witwer: I worked homicide before federal. This is what we call an orgy of evidence. You know how many orgies I had as a homicide cop? Officer Fletcher: How many? Danny Witwer: None. [crouches down ...
Sean Parker: You don't even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? Eduardo Saverin: [Sarcastically] You? Sean Parker: [the scene ...
