Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because "given something like death, what does it matt...
My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, ...
There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more suprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep movin...
The Actor, noticing a closed bookshop, dismounted from the horse which he tied to a street lamp. He woke up the bookseller and bought a Spanish grammar and dictionary. He set out again across town marveling at the way that the words of the foreign la...
I cannot recall having believed, even as a child, that the purpose of reading fiction was to learn about the place commonly called the real world. I seem to have sensed from the first that to read fiction was to make available for myself a new kind o...
May in Varanasi. 25° and wet. It's like the 6th circle of the inferno here, Edith - where they flail the arses off the howling heretics and the men who fuck marine life etc. NATO's stomping on the Balkans while India and Pakistan threaten one anothe...
Jesus is not saying, “Make sure you pray a prayer of repentance, start going to church, and wait for Me to come back.” He is saying, “You can live a radically different life because there’s a new world order that just broke in, so stop walkin...
I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant ci...
It is only when one knows the unutterability of the name of God that one can utter the name of Jesus Christ; it is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection a...
It's my conceit that perhaps some diseases perceived as diseases that destroy a well-functioning machine actually turn it into a new but still well-functioning machine with a different purpose. The AIDS virus: look at it from its point of view. Very ...
There were still few rules at Down House, and Charles was not very good at enforcing the ones he and Emma did make. This was well known among his children. In 1855, when Lenny was about five, Charles walked in to find his son jumping up and down and ...
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselv...
Content is not mere facts, drummed into tender little minds under the relentless pounding of rote learning. Content--even the date of the Quebec Act, Confederation, or the Battle of Vimy Ridge, or the name of the first prime minister-- is cultural ca...
Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and fre...
Jerry Johnson: You know, I must say, we have heard some strange things coming out of your office in New Orleans. First, we heard that the Cuban exiles killed the President. Then the mob. Now your latest theory seems to be that the CIA, the FBI, and t...
Carol Marcus: Please tell me what you're feeling. Kirk: There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help. My son... my life that could have been... and wasn't. How do I feel? O...
[Discussing a new prisoner who has to spend the night in the box] Dragline: He ain't in the box because of the joke played on him. He back-sassed a free man. They got their rules. We ain't got nothin' to do with that. Would probably have happened to ...
Mr. Parker: So what else happened today? Mother: Oh, nothing much. Ralphie had a fight? Mr. Parker: A fight? What kind of a fight? [Looks at Ralphie] Mother: Oh, you know how boys are. I gave him a talking to... [Looks at the news paper] Mother: Uh I...
Dr. Schreber: When they first brought us here, they extracted what was in us and stored the information, remixed it like so much paint, and gave us back new memories of their choosing. But they still needed an artist to help them. I understood the hu...
[after Bill shoots the golf cart, triggering Frank's heart attack] Bill Foster: What's wrong? Frank: My - heart... Bill Foster: Well, what can I do about it? Frank: Pills... get p-pills... Bill Foster: Where are your pills? [Frank points towards the ...
[Forrest has finished assembling his rifle] Forrest Gump: DONE, DRILL SERGEANT! Drill Sergeant: GUUUUUUMP! Why did you put that weapon together so quickly, Gump? Forrest Gump: [confused] You told me to, Drill Sergeant? Drill Sergeant: Jesus H. Christ...
