Swamps where cedars grow and turtles wait on logs but not for anything in particular; fields bordered by crooked fences broken by years of standing still; orchards so old they have forgotten where the farmhouse is. In the north I have eaten my lunch ...
When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam in 1964, U.S. policy became pretty much to ignore them - part and parcel of President Lyndon B. Johnson's determination to keep the costs of his increasingly futile military escal...
While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. ...
Eve Kendall: It's going to be a long night. Roger Thornhill: True. Eve Kendall: And I don't particularly like the book I've started. Roger Thornhill: Ah. Eve Kendall: You know what I mean? Roger Thornhill: Ah, let me think. Yes, I know exactly what y...
Eve Kendall: While I'm calling, you can change your clothes. Roger Thornhill: Where do you propose I do that? In Marshall Fields' window? Eve Kendall: I sort of had the men's room in mind. Roger Thornhill: Did you, now? You're the smartest girl I eve...
Judge Anson B. Flynn: How long have you known your client? Victor Larrabee: Seven years, Your Honor. Judge Anson B. Flynn: Do you know him to be a reasonable man? Victor Larrabee: Absolutely. Clara Thornhill: Ha! Roger Thornhill: Mother. Judge Anson ...
Rock Biter: Where-where-where I come from in the North, we used to have exquisite gourmet rocks. Only now... now, they're all gone. Night Hob: I know how it happened. Rock Biter: Oh, I - I *swear* it wasn't me! Night Hob: Oh, heck, no!
Senator Kelly: [Mystique in disguise] Mr. Stryker, do you really want to turn this into some kind of war? William Stryker: I was pilotin' Black Ops missions in the jungles of North Vietnam while you were suckin' on your mama's tit at Woodstock, Kelly...
I lived in South Africa until I was 11 when we first immigrated. My mom had sent me back there when I was 14 for summer vacation. I wasn't doing very well in school, my grades were slipping. I called my mom one day and told her that I wasn't coming b...
North," said the face beneath the sheet. "I belong to the National Association of Broadcasting Employees and Technicians. If you wake me up before I've slept twelve hours, I get paid short turnaround." "But Rose--" "If you wake me up before seven hou...
These Moments Cascade Upon One Another "Here at shepherd's dusk, in a valley without echo, I listen for you. With a frayed longing, I hear your shadow voice whispering within me from far away. I grasp at what is left of this husky sun lying golden up...
His feet went banging down some stairs. He closed his eyes. They went through cinders and dirt, his heels gathering small windrows of trash. A dim world receded above his upturned toes, shapes of skewed shacks erupted bluely in the niggard lamplight....
Of course one’s sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one’s class, race, gender, and sexual identification. … But [regarding] national character …, aside from references to a national aest...
Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that t...
Are you going to rape me at any point or anything?" I just figured it was good to get things out in the open, get myself in the right headspace. He whipped his head around and looked at me like I'd just insulted his grandmother. "The fuck? No, I'm no...
Strange how it is that men never act crueler than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take...
It's a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god's handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There's not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungai...
The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog th...
In any East Asian culture, you will find that women have a very tangible power within the household. This is often rejcted by non-Asian feminists who argue that it is not real power, but.. Japanese women look at the low status attributed to the domes...
The stag’s enormous head turned slightly—toward the wagon, toward the small window. The Lord of the North. So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home, she’d once told Ansel as they lay under a blanket of stars and tra...
True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puff...
