I don't know why I wanted a girl,' he says, as if to himself. 'I mean, I wouldn't swap Louis, but when they said, 'It's a boy!', I thought: 'Oh, well.' Everyone else was incredibly pleased that it was a boy – grandparents are always very pleased wh...
One of the most important things I have found is that no one school of thought has all of the answers. Sometimes history plugs a gap that science can't fill. Often philosophy has answers that science relies on for its discoveries. Theology needs the ...
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plug...
I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childho...
I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set o...
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them,...
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. W...
... I succeeded at math, at least by the usual evaluation criteria: grades. Yet while I might have earned top marks in geometry and algebra, I was merely following memorized rules, plugging in numbers and dutifully crunching out answers by rote, with...
Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilec...
In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can ...
Lionel McCready: [about Helene] She's at the Fillmore all the time. Patrick Kenzie: She's at the Fillmore lounge? Lionel McCready: Yeah, she drinks every day. She's got the gene, you know? The disease. Our parents had it too. Patrick Kenzie: She use ...
The Terminator: In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The S...
Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops....
The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the flashing of the unset clock on the microwave. He feels a...
Max Schumacher: Howard, I'm taking you off the air. I think you're having a breakdown, require treatment. Howard Beale: This is not a psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity. I'm imbued, Max. I'm imbued with some special spirit. It's...
Did you ever, when you were little, endure your parents’ warnings, then wait for them to leave the room, pry loose protective covers and consider inserting some metal object into an electrical outlet? Did you wonder if for once you might light up t...
This week in live current events: your eyes. All power can be dangerous: Direct or alternating, you, socket to me. Plugged in and the grid is humming, this electricity, molecule-deep desire: particular friction, a charge strong enough to stop a heart...
As a songwriter, I'm gathering clues and possibilities all the time, whether I see a piano that day or not. I've tried to explain to people how I collect these dispatches, because I think anybody can do what I'm talking about. Once I do plug in, I mi...
Wreck-It Ralph: [enters the empty penthouse] Hello? Felix? Mary? Anyone? Gene: [pouring himself a martini at the bar] Well, you actually went and did it. Wreck-It Ralph: Gene, where is everybody? Gene: They're gone. After Felix went looking for you a...
Jim Craig: Wait a second, I've given you all I've got, and now you're pulling the plug on me? Herb Brooks: Have you? Given me your very best? Because I know there's a lot more in you, a whole other level, that for some reason you just don't want to g...
[Judge Doom about to "dip" Roger] Eddie Valiant: Hey, Judge. Doesn't a dying rabbit deserve a last request? Roger Rabbit: Yeah, nose plugs would be nice. Eddie Valiant: I think you want a drink. So, how about it, Judge? Judge Doom: Well, why not? I d...
