Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition, the intricate web ol problems and solutions, imagination and code. He kept nothing from the pas...
Look, I say. You can't just let your thoughts float around in the ether and hope eventually they'll connect with something. It's absurd. No, it's not, Gil says. Lots of good things happen that way. Penicillin. Teflon. Smart dust. Something happens th...
I don't think I could ever live with either a man or a woman for a long time. Male and female are attractive to my mind, but when it comes to the sexual act I am afraid. In every situation I need a lot of stimulation before I am conquered by the forc...
One noteworthy study suggests that people who suppress negative emotions tend to leak those emotions later in unexpected ways. The psychologist Judith Grob asked people to hide their emotions when she showed them disgusting images. She even had them ...
There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did kno...
I took ten days off and by 11 o’clock on the first morning I had drunk fourteen cups of coffee, read all the newspapers and the Guardian and then… and then what? By lunchtime I was so bored that I decided to hang a few pictures. So I found a hamm...
In the end, that’s what Kevin has never forgiven us. He may not resent that we tried to impose a curtain between himself and the adult terrors lurking behind it. But he does powerfully resent that we led him down the garden path—that we enticed h...
For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’ strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw m...
Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thoug...
Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead.” “No, mija. They don’t want you dead.” “Then explain this.” I handed him the picture. He chuckled again. “No, they don’t want you dead. That w...
Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you'...
I think of myth and magic as the hieroglyphics of the human psyche. They are a special language that circumvents conscious thought and goes straight to the subconscious. Non-fiction uses the medium of information. It tells us what we need to know. Sc...
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one else can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world....
A novel works it's magic by putting a reader inside another person's life. The pace is as slow as life. It's as detailed as life. It requires you, the reader, to fill in an outline of words with vivid pictures drawn subconsciously from your own life,...
What's the first sign of a lurking, hidden expectation you didn't know you had? Pain! People don't do what we want, things don't happen quickly enough, the weather doesn't cooperate, our bodies don't cooperate. Why are these moments so painful? Becau...
He gives her his Art History lecture. ‘Then you get Mo-net and Ma-net, that’s a little tricky, Mo-net was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma-net was the one did Bareass on the Grass and shit, his color...
Rick: Fuck! Why do these guys have to be black? I mean, why? No matter how we spin this thing, I'm either gonna lose the black vote or I'm gonna lose the law and order vote! Karen: You know, I think you're worrying too much. You have a lot of support...
Ellerby: This unit is new, and you are the newest members of it. You have been selected from the basis of intelligence and aptitude. This is an elite unit. Our job is to smash, or marginally disrupt, organized crime in the city by enhanced cooperatio...
Harvey Milk: [answering the phone] Scotty? Paul: I'm sorry, sir. I read about you in the paper. Harvey Milk: I'm sorry, I can't talk right now. Paul: Sir, I think I'm gonna kill myself. Harvey Milk: No, you don't want to do that. Where are you callin...
[in Rose Klebb's Istanbul office] Rosa Klebb: Corporal, I have chosen you for an important assignment. It's purpose is to give false information to the enemy. If you complete it successfully, you will be promoted. [referring to a picture of James Bon...
Sean Parker: And that's where you're headed, a billion dollar valuation. Unless you take bad advice, in which case you may as well have come up with a chain of very successful yogurt shops. When you go fishing you can catch a lot of fish, or you can ...
