[last lines] Narrator: The Mercury program was over. Four years later, astronaut Gus Grissom was killed, along with astronauts White and Chaffee, when fire swept through their Apollo capsule. But on that glorious day in May 1963, Gordo Cooper went hi...
Kay Eiffel: [narrating] It wasn't just about finding a guitar. It was about finding a guitar that said something about Harold. Unfortunately, this guitar said: "When I get back to Georgia, that woman gonna feel my pain." This one said something along...
[last lines] Red: [narrating] I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make...
Red: [narrating] Not long after the warden deprived us of his company, I got a postcard in the mail. It was blank, but the postmark said Fort Hancock, Texas. Fort Hancock... right on the border. That's where Andy crossed. When I picture him heading s...
Red: [narrating] There's a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole, so maybe they'd send me back. Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well....
Patrick Bateman: [narrating] I'm fairly certain that Timothy Bryce and Evelyn are having an affair. Timothy is the only interesting person I know. I'm almost completely indifferent as to whether Evelyn knows I'm having an affair with Courtney Rawlins...
[first lines] Holly Sargis: [voice over narration] My Mother dies of pneumonia when I was just a kid. My Father kept their wedding cake in the freezer for ten whole years. After the funeral he gave it to the yard man. He tried to act cheerful but he ...
Holly Sargis: [voice over narration] Then sure enough Dad found out I been running around behind his back. He was madder than I ever seen him. His punishment for deceiving him: he went and shot my dog. He made me take extra music lessons everyday aft...
Narrator: [voice-over] It is well to dream of glorious war in a snug armchair at home, but it is a very different thing to see it first hand. And after the death of his friend, Barry's thoughts turned from those of military glory to those of finding ...
Deckard: [narrating] I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life - anybody's life; my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come f...
To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. Th...
Thus we come to the problem of determining what the poem is 'about.' Charles Altieri notes that '[a]n expression of the self can be one that is intended, the self's act, or one that is symptomatic, the act of a self not in control of what it manifest...
... Because the writer resented that she had turned to me I became the handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness. That's how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking ques...
Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it - and, certainly, they were many ...
The concept of an author, the single creative person who gives the text 'authority', only comes later in this period. Most Old English poetry is anonymous, even though names which are in no way comparable, such as Caedmon and Deor, are used to identi...
During the second half of the twentieth century, cross-fertilization among the disciplines of history, literature, sociology, and psychology led to scholarly awareness that historical accounts are not direct representations of actual events; they are...
Sunny put on eyebrows, eyelashes, makeup, matching pajamas, a silk robe, and then say looking at herself in the vanity mirror in her bathroom. She had experienced moments in her life when she realized that she was actually alive and living in the wor...
May the economic discrimination you impose on your own people bloat your mind. That polluted rubbish occupying your mind-set needs to be swept clean. May the disgusted look you impose on those you judge poor burn your eyes. That evil look occupying y...
Mr. Parker: Get in the car. Get in the car. [Mother runs back inside] Mr. Parker: If we don't hurry, we're gonna miss all the good trees! Mr. Parker: [to the kids] Go on, go on. Ralphie as Adult: [narrating, as Mother switches off the leg lamp] My mo...
[first lines] Narrator: [title card] In 1941 China and Japan had been in a state of undeclared war for four years. A Japanese army of occupation was in control of much of the countryside and many towns and cities. In Shanghai thousands of Westerners,...
Narrator: Most of the week we were Ozzie and Harriet, but every Saturday night we were finding something out: we were finding out more and more that we were not alone. It used to be that when I came home angry and depressed I'd just clean my condo, p...
