I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Puli...
Hans Gruber: [addressing the hostages] I wanted this to be professional, efficient, adult, cooperative. Not a lot to ask. Alas, your Mr. Takagi did not see it that way... so he won't be joining us for the rest of his life. We can go any way you want ...
Marla Singer: There are things about you that I like. You're smart, you're funny, you're... spectacular in bed... But you're intolerable! You have very serious emotional problems. Deep seated problems for which you should seek professional help. Narr...
Narrator: Home was a condo on the fifteenth floor of a filing cabinet for widows and young professionals. The walls were solid concrete. A foot of concrete is important when your next-door neighbor lets their hearing aid go and have to watch game-sho...
Mathilda: You killed my brother. Stansfield: I'm sorry. And you want to join him? Mathilda: No. Stansfield: It's always the same thing. It's when you start to become really afraid of death that you learn to appreciate life. Do you like life, sweethea...
Léon: There was someone a long time ago. Before I came to the States. Her father didn't want her to see me. She was from a very respectable family. Mine was, you know, not so respectable. Her dad went nuts every time she'd take off to see me. Mathil...
[a chambermaid enters Irene Adler's room and screams when she sees Holmes, handcuffed naked to the bed with a pillow covering his groin] Sherlock Holmes: Madam, I need you to remain calm. And trust me, I'm a professional. Beneath this pillow, lies th...
The first revolution is to transform the status of evaluation from untouchable to respectable , i.e., from the days a century ago when the value-free doctrine held that there could be no place for the serious treatment of evaluation within the scienc...
Everywhere was the atmosphere of a long debauch that had to end; the orchestras played too fast, the stakes were too high at the gambling tables, the players were so empty, so tired, secretly hoping to vanish together into sleep and ... maybe wake on...
We are all part of a universal game. Returning to our essence while living in the world is the object of the game. The earth is the game board, and we are the pieces on the board. We move around and around until we remember who we really are, and the...
Building discipline, earning respect , and overcoming adversity are all parts of a winning game plan. If you don't have a game plan, where are you going? When I'm talking about a game plan, I'm talking about how you go about being the best player you...
You can come round to my flat." Toreth's voice changed, sliding subtly into something hard-edged but seductive. "I don't need chains to make you do what I want. I don't need anything. I can take whatever I want from you, however I want it, and you ca...
Being an outsider doesn't necessarily indicate any sort of social failing. We do not view a tuba player as musically challenged if he cannot play the violin.
Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death...
Think of the jazz improv artist responding to the musical banter among her fellow players onstage. Aside from whatever training they've done in advance, as soon as the curtain opens, they move into unknown territory together, creating something new e...
Rosenfeld runs the metropolitan staff, the Post's largest, like a football coach. He prods his players, letting them know that he has promised the front office results, pleading, yelling, cajoling, pacing, working his facial expressions for instant e...
Harriet pushed her hair back and looked at him seriously. 'Sport, what are you going to be when you grow up?' 'You know what. You know I'm going to be a ball player.' 'Well, I'm going to be a writer. And when I say that's a mountain, that's a mountai...
I had a dream about you. I was a mannequin with a record player for a head, and you were an aspiring DJ. You lusted after me and I was appreciative, because you were the first person who wanted me for what’s going on in my head, and not because I h...
It was at this time that backgammon was invented and began to be popular. It is a kind of paradigm of how wealth is acquired, which in this world is not the reward of intelligence or ability, just as luck is not a product of skill... If luck favours ...
My mood, as I identify with each of my heroes, resembles what I used to feel when I played alone as a child. Like all children, I liked to play make-believe, to put myself in someone else's place and imagine dream worlds in which I was a soldier, a f...
What a waste of time it would be to insist that everyone develop each of the specialties we call upon to an equal level. We'd get bogged down in remedial training programs, trying to get the cornet players up to speed with the computer programmers, s...