Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on...
Our poor human heart is flawed: it is like a cake without the frosting: the first two acts of the theatre without the climax. Even its design is marred for a small piece is missing out of the side. That is why it remains so unsatisfied: it wants life...
The best books... The best books of men are soon exhausted-- they are cisterns, and not springing fountains. You enjoy them very much at the first acquaintance, and you think you could hear them a hundred times over- but you could not- you soon find ...
Could you see it? Those eyes. Bright yet solemn. Masking her sadness within? Could it be that she will come to know, What may be? A truth in the beauty, Of something so real? Within you, Will she see? See the light so pure, Of what she had never trul...
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention aand innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise wit...
The vocal chorus will be along shortly: I like that part especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. Th...
[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin,...
Arthur: It's all yours. And don't forget your membership proposal. Try picking a more suitable candidate this time. Harry Hart: Seventeen years and still evolving with the times remains an entirely foreign concept to you. You don't remind me that I w...
[Thorwald forces Jeff's apartment door open and stands before him, closing the door behind him] Lars Thorwald: What do you want from me? [Jeff does not reply] Lars Thorwald: Your friend, the girl, could have turned me in. Why didn't she? [no reply] L...
Sykes: Say, back there in Starbuck. How'd my boy do? Pike Bishop: Your boy? Crazy Lee? Sykes: Yeah, C.L., Clarence Lee, my daughter's boy. Not too bright, but a good boy. Pike Bishop: [thinks back on Crazy Lee agreeing to remain behind while the rest...
We sometimes just have to let things be. There are times in life that things happen, and we just cannot control them. There are times when we don't want things to happen, but they do. Things that we don't want to know, we learn. Times in which people...
When I fell in love; I remained the same person; I was before love. In fact I came to know who I am, when in love. But to my surprise, falling out of love was different. I was no more ‘Me’. I knew and I used to believe that you don’t make love;...
Out of a hundred people: Those who always know better- 52 Doubting every step- all the rest Glad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long- as high as 49 Always good, because they can’t be otherwise- 4 maybe 5 Able to admire without envy- 18 Liv...
How do we find words for describing levels of betrayal and emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual torture that fragment and destroy a child or cast and case traumatic shadows over the whole of adult life? We might, as a society, slowly find it pos...
Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood. I’m coming, says Jude. And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent. What color? I say Devastating blue, she says. The pale blue eyes of a murdered boy. Very nice. You remembered, she says. Jude co...
Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn’t really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. ...
The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely...
The Hill Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass; Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still, When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die Al...
In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelli...
Reading Virginia Woolf will change your life, may even save it. If you want to make sense of modern life, the works of Virginia Woolf remain essential reading. More than fifty years since her death, accounts of her life still set the pace for modern ...
For the fact was drugs were not necessary to most of us, because the music, youth, sweaty bodies were enough. And if it was too hot, too humid to sleep the next day, and we awoke bathed in sweat, it did not matter: We remained in a state of animated ...
