to paraphrase science writer John D. Barrow … we know they are impossible and yet we can imagine them anyway. Our brains, it turns out, are not prisoners of the world we live in; we can fly free! We can, any time we like, create the impossible.
When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; an...
Mental ghettos are not mirages; they actually exist in palpable reality: being "open" inside one's mental or intellectual ghetto does not open its door but simply allows one to harbour the illusion that there is no ghetto and no door. The most danger...
The first day I walked into prison, and he slammed that door, I knew the magnitude of the decision that I made, and the poor judgment, and what I allowed to happen to the animals. And, you know, it's no way of explaining the hurt and the guilt that I...
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be ment...
When I go back to family reunions everybody goes, 'Hey cousin! Hey Auntie!' And I'm like, 'Okay I don't know you, I have no idea who you are.' I am auntie and cousin for so many and even the ones in prison call me collect. And I'll be like, 'Which of...
The woman who runs the Pennsylvania Innocence Project told me that there's a man she's been trying to get out of prison for 26 years. Every night before she goes to bed, she thinks, 'What is he doing?' She says you don't sleep. And yet, she has the g...
You can make a very good argument that society would be much worse off if you let 10 rapists and murderers free rather than put one poor, wrongly accused accountant in prison. And so my only point on that is that it should open up an argument. It sho...
I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to se...
As a prisoner of conscience committed to peaceful transition to democracy, I urge Europe to apply economic sanctions against Ethiopia. What short-term pain may result will be compensated by long-term gain. A pledge to re-engage energetically with a d...
When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would li...
Love is the thing that corrodes the mind and pushes it to do the unimaginable. Love is the thorn that barbs into your flesh and makes you bleed a slow, torturous death. Love is the prison that confines you to the unending darkness that absorbs chunks...
Music eliminates my gravity. When I'm singing, I'm a ravenous pterodactyl. I'm alive and free and hungry, and I know who I am. But the flood is coming; it's weighing me down, making me prisoner to my loneliness and pain. -character Joanna (Broken)
Instead of putting someone in prison for being a hooligan, give him a choice. He may have beaten someone up and he's got eight years, but tell him you can do eight years inside or spend five years in the Army. Put him in the Parachute Regiment, they'...
Amon Goeth: [addressing prisoners] Nobody knows who stole the chicken, hmm? S.S. Guard: Tell him about the chicken! Amon Goeth: A man walks around with a chicken and nobody notices this... S.S. Guard: Save yourselves, save yourself. Tell him about th...
Stratwitch: Your name? Ives: Ives. [Strachwitz looks through his prisoner profiles] Stratwitch: Ives... Ives... Oh, yes. Archibald Ives. Scot. The photograph doesn't do justice. Ives: I'd like to see one of you under similar circumstances.
[the German camp commandant explains why so many incorrigible Allied prisoners were placed in the place Stalag] Von Luger: We have in effect put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch this basket carefully.
Herr Kuhn: We have reason to believe this prisoner is the mastermind behind numerous criminal escape attempts. Von Luger: [sarcastically] Squadron Leader Bartlett has been three months in your care! And the Gestapo has only "reason to believe"!
John Coffey: [after being locked inside his prison cell, he looks up at Paul] I couldn't help it, Boss. I tried to take it back... but it was too late. [Paul glances at John Coffey for a second and walks away]
Dumbledore: Send a message to Azkaban. I think they'll find they're missing a prisoner. Barty Crouch Junior: [gloating] I'll be welcomed back like a hero! Dumbledore: Perhaps. Personally, I've never had much time for heroes.
Maude: You know, at one time, I used to break into pet shops to liberate the canaries. But I decided that was an idea way before its time. Zoos are full, prisons are overflowing... oh my, how the world still *dearly* loves a *cage.*
