I think there's something to the idea that the divine dwells more easily in text than in images. Text allows for more abstract thought, more of a separation between you and the physical world, more room for you and God to meet in the middle. I find i...
The proletariat could plan to massacre the whole ruling class; a fanatic Jew or black could dream of seizing the secret of the atomic bomb and turning all of humanity entirely Jewish or entirely black: but a woman could not even dream of exterminatin...
In reading, friendship is restored immediately to its original purity. With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends—books—it’s because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when...
Science’s skeptical core makes it a poor competitor for human hearts and minds, which recoil from its ongoing controversies and prefer the security of seemingly eternal truths. If the scientific approach were just one more interpretation of the cos...
She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. [...] This naive combinati...
Interpreters package and then sell, rent, or impose upon us artificially flavored illusions of truth, salvation, enlightenment, and happiness that are built upon their goals. That twisted information and those errant goals and are often very differen...
Man is a glorious and unique species of animal. The species originated by evolution.... Future evolution could raise man to superb heights as yet hardly glimpsed, but it will not automatically do so. As far as can now be foreseen, evolutionary degene...
Nesse’s research focuses on the evolutionary origins of depression. Why does depression exist at all? If it’s stayed in our gene pool for so long, he argues, there must be some evolutionary benefit. Nesse believes that depression may be an adapti...
I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, o...
Milo Tindle: There it is! The original blunt instrument; the poker. Right! Andrew Wyke: Now steady... Milo Tindle: Where do you want it? Andrew Wyke: Don't get carried away. It's not a murder weapon you're talking about you know! Milo Tindle: No? And...
Erin Gruwell: So when you're dead, you'll get respect, that what you think? [murmurs of 'yeah' from the class] Erin Gruwell: You know what's gonna happen when you die? You're gonna rot in the ground, and people are going to go on living, and they're ...
Edith: My God, what is this? It looks like a genuine Van Gogh, but I've never seen it before... Dan: Is that an original, John? John Oldman: No, it's just a gift someone gave me. Edith: Still, it's a superb copy. Contemporaneous I think, may I take a...
Linda McFly: [having "originally" - before Marty went back in time and altered the past - complained about not being very popular socially] If Paul calls, tell him I'm working late at the boutique tonight. Dave McFly: Linda, first of all, I'm not you...
The word surrender has some shadowy connotations. We think it’s weak to surrender, but sometimes it’s the bravest thing we can possibly do. It means to give our will over to another . . . and when that other is Christ, we are surrendering our pri...
Write it down. Not just to remember it, but to forget it in the right way. My notebook are a kind of materialized subconscious, a hard-copy memory and its invisible substrata, following their own rules. More than once I have been surprised to discove...
I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That go...
I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back to music - except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who kn...
What followed was a great treat for me. This was Irish traditional music as I had hoped to see and hear it, spontaneous and from the heart, and not produced for the sake of the tourist industry. As I sat there with my pint in my hand, enjoying the ji...
One of the strangest things is the act of creation. You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument. You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery r...
[longer introduction to "Night On Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria"] Narrator: The last number in our Fantasia program is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other off perfectly. The firs...
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: That music... Frau Blücher: Yes. It's in your blood - it's in the blood of ALL Frankensteins. It reaches the soul when words are useless. Your grandfather used to play it to the creature HE vas making. Dr. Frederick Frank...
