Wait,” he said. “That’s not a word.” I looked down to where, in a moment of desperation, I’d played zixic on a triple-word-score space. “Uh, sure it is.” “What’s it mean?” “It’s sort of like…quixotic, but with more…” “...
When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts ...
Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it it very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that ...
You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. Y...
Sir Ken Robinson’s 2008 talk on educational reform—entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”—has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children’s scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they ...
Raoul Duke: [narrating] Ignore this terrible drug. Yeah. Pretend it's not happening. Raoul Duke: Yeah. HI THERE! My name... is, uh, Raoul Duke. I'm on the list. Free lunch, final wisdom, total coverage. I have my attorneyyyyyyy... with me, and I real...
Hendley: Come on, Roger. We all know the score here, at least... most of us do. Your idea of this escape is to... start another front, to foul up the Germans behind the lines. All right, that's fine, that's fine. But once we get passed that barbed wi...
Herb Brooks: I'm thinking about sitting you down Jim. Jim Craig: What? Wait what are you talking about? Herb Brooks: No, it's not your fault. I played you way too much, and you're too tired. Besides that, I think it's time I give Janny a look. He's b...
Mark Van Doren: [reciting poetry at his birthday party] Now see summer bloom upon this lee, three score rings around this tree, once green, now bare, once lush, now sere, consoled only that I am planted here... John Van Doren: You certainly are! Mark...
Antonio Salieri: [reflecting upon a Mozart score] Astounding! It was actually, it was beyond belief. But they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it as if he we...
It’s much easier to remember the World Series heroics of Tony Pérez, Pete Rose, and Joe Morgan than it is to recall who set the table for Rose during Game 7 of the 1975 World Series vs. Boston. The Red Sox led 3-2 in the seventh when [Ken] Griffey...
Mary Lou et moi, on est amies depuis qu’on est toutes petites. J’étais le boute-en-train de service, et elle, le cancre de la classe. « Cancre » n’est peut-être pas le mot juste. Disons que ses objectifs n’étaient pas très hauts. Elle v...
I think about pinball, and how being a kid’s like being shot up the firing lane and there’s no veering left or right; you’re just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you’re sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there�...
London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others. Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn't unlike any other major city - New York or Paris or Sydney - but he felt instinctively that London was .... at the extreme. The darker side of that histo...
Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we...
Vincent Hanna: Seven years in Folsom. In the hole for three. McNeil before that. McNeil as tough as they say? Neil McCauley: You lookin' to become a penologist? Vincent Hanna: You lookin' to go back? You know, I chased down some crews; guys just look...
On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. ...
Heroes in fact die with one's youth. They are pinned like butterflies to the setting board of early memories—the time when skies were always blue, the sun shone and the air was filled with the sounds and scents of grass being cut. I find myself sti...
Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to the game of Russian Billiards as once he used to play it with a long vanished girlfriend. A game in which, he says, “...at the termination of a...
Michael rose to his feet and padded down the last few steps silently, came up behind Kim, and leaned over her to say, “I vant to drink your blood” in a heavy, fake-Dracula accent. She shrieked, flailed, and a zombie ate her brains on-screen. You ...
My companions for the afternoon were affable, welcoming middle-aged men in their late thirties and early forties who simply had no conception of the import of the afternoon for the rest of us. To them it was an afternoon out, a fun thing to do on a S...
