I took music theory for one year in high school and flunked all but one six-week period. That's because I couldn't read music, and the rest of the class was already eight or nine years into it. The teacher would sit down and hit a ten-fingered chord ...
I remember telling my second-graders the basic 'Metamorphosis' story, saying, like, 'What about - what if a guy woke up one morning and he was a bug? Wouldn't that be weird?' And they loved that. And I think that was the trigger that made me think, l...
After my second, I started working with a nutritionist who specializes in post-baby weight loss. It's called Simply Beautiful Mom. I'm in restaurants all the time because of work, and she actually will look at menus online before I go and she says, '...
I didn't get married until I was forty because I wanted to be stable when I got married. I think I just avoided my first marriage and went right to the second. It's sort of how I see it. When you're young, just trying to make it, and trying to find y...
When you do movies on low budgets, you don't want to have a location that requires a very big light right outside the window when you're 10 stories up. You have to find a location where you have a terrace outside, or you can light from a second floor...
Juror #3: [to Juror #8 about the El-Train drowning out the supposed death threat] You're talkin' about a matter of *seconds!* Nobody can be *that* accurate! Juror #8: Well, I think testimony that can put a boy into the electric chair *should* be that...
Edward Cole: The sequel was like that. She never backed me up on anything. Carter Chambers: The sequel? Edward Cole: The second Mrs Edward Cole. [Carter rolls his eyes] Edward Cole: Hell, that woman hated me. Kyle the parachutist: Maybe because you c...
Isaiah is by far the finest and least objectionable of the seventeen prophets whose supposed productions form the latter part of the Old Testament. A distinctly higher moral tone appears in the writings called by his name, and this is especially noti...
There is a subset of Democrats who tend to mis-fill out ballots. The way you mark the ballot is like an S.A.T. - you fill in the circle. And the subset of people who tend to, like, put a check there instead, or an X, or fill it out wrong, tend to be ...
I really don't like going out. I don't like restaurants because I don't like the idea of someone, a waitress, being responsible for my evening. I like seconds, and more, and lots of conversation, and I've always hated the idea that in a restaurant an...
Excerpt: Paradox – Bound By Blood. The hands on a clock never falter, not for a second. One day ends; and a new begins. If there was one thing on this earth that could be counted on, it was that. Time never paused to mourn the dead. That particular...
Have you ever been on a roller coaster, Togawa-kun? You're only riding on it for a few minutes, right? If you spent the entire ride thinking "only so many seconds left... until this ride is over..." then what was the point of riding it in the first p...
When you play piano, your left hand and right hand are synced. Your brain basically has a clock, so that the right hand knows that 0.3 seconds after I hit this key, I need to hit that one. And the right hand knows not to hit keys that the left hand i...
The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all secon...
I think that there always have been and always will be at least two Americas - the poor America, the second America, tends to be in the shadows. Sometimes it's an America of people in a ghetto of color, sometimes it's an economic ghetto, but definite...
You walk into the class in second grade. You can't read. What are you going to do if you're going to make it? You identify the smart kid. You make friends with him. You sit next to him. You grow a team around you. You delegate your work to others. Yo...
The origin of all revolutions and corruption, and the spur and source of all base morals are just two sayings: The First Saying: 'So long as I'm full, what is it to me if others die of hunger?' The Second Saying: 'You suffer hardship so that I can li...
It's my belief that, since the end of the Second World War, psychology has moved too far away from its original roots, which were to make the lives of all people more fulfilling and productive, and too much toward the important, but not all-important...
God directs his people not simply to worship but to sing his praises “before the nations.” We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.
After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?
I'm Magnus." He smiled, showing blinding white teeth. "Magnus Bane." "Are we long-lost friends, by any chance?" Simon said. "Just wondering." "No, we never got along all that well," said Magnus. "Long-lost acquaintances? Compadres? My cat liked you.
