Ray Charles: I want you to promise me something. Promise you won't feel sorry for me just because I'm blind. Della Bea Robinson: How can I pity someone I admire?
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things th...
Let's get with it, guys: You don't need to hear a Ministry song to get political. You should be political on your own. We're just a side project to society. So do I care what people think about me personally? No. I just do what I do.
I would get up at 3 in the morning and write. Or sometimes I would write at midnight. Or I would write when my child napped. It wasn't a burden. I was so enthused about what I was doing at the time that I really didn't mind.
I once waited on Sean Connery. A long time ago. This was at the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh. They closed down the restaurant for him, and when he walked in with his morning paper, all the waitresses started squealing. He was a big guy, bigger than ...
I think that the first men to land on Pluto are going to make some very astonishing discoveries. But I am also sure that they will never go there in rockets. They will have to make the immense trip by some more powerful means - like the anti-gravitat...
Overweight Man: Been to the top of the tower? Ray: Yeah... yeah, it's rubbish. Overweight Man: It is? The guide book says it's a must see. Ray: Well you lot ain't going up there. Overweight Man: Pardon me? Why? Ray: I mean, it's all winding stairs. I...
Policeman: [to Ray, who is trying to escape from Bruges on the train] Are you Irish? Ray: Yea. Policeman: What is your name? Ray: Er-Derek Fer... ler. Policeman: You eet the Canadian. Ray: What? Policeman: You eet the Canadian. Ray: I eat the Canadia...
Ray: Why didn't you wave hello to me today when I waved hello to you today? Jimmy: I was on a very strong horse tranquilizer today; Wasn't waving hello to anybody. Except... maybe to a horse. Ray: Huh? What are you talking about? Jimmy: Just horseshi...
Every day, getting up early in the morning before much traffic, my wife takes me 10 miles from home, drops me off, and I have to get back.
Abby: Ray? Ray: You're bad. Abby: What? Ray: I said you're bad. Abby: [long pause, then smiles] You're bad too. Ray: We're both bad.
Ray: I saw your midget today. Little prick didn't even say hello. Chloë: Well, he's on a lot of ketamine. Ray: What's that? Ray: Um, horse tranquilizer. Ray: Horse tranquilizer? Where'd he get that? Chloë: I sold it to him. Ray: You can't sell hors...
Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it.
I recently saw the movie about Ray Charles, and there's a scene where he falls down and the mother doesn't help him. She says, I don't want anyone to treat you like a cripple. I've fallen down before, and Molly will say, get up and just go.
It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my...
People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.
We don't really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing, so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for tra...
My family were great story-tellers. My mum was one of 12 and they were all fighting to tell stories. You have to tell a good tale or no one is going to listen. You have to make it entertaining and interesting. That's how I learned to tell stories.
I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry a...
I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's somethin...
