If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel. We're obliged to keep trying to convey meaning through correct sentences. After a while, the good-soldier rigidity of polished pros...
The greenness of Ireland is a false greenness, after all. Not that it isn't green - the place can still make you have to pull off and swallow one of your heart pills. It's that the greenness doesn't mean what it seems. It doesn't encode a pastoral pa...
When most people think about the future, they dream up ways that they might live happier lives. But notice this phenomenon. When people remember the crucial events that formed them, they don't usually talk about happiness. It is usually the ordeals t...
God is after the bigger picture of your life. He is writing your story. I'm about to say something that may seem antithetical to this book, but need you to hear this: your story has far more to do with finding God's unique calling and purpose for you...
Only strong women, and they seem to be rare, can handle a frank and direct woman who doesn't sweet-talk or need others to nerve her. You can identify the easily intimidated because they need a gaggle of like-minded clones to back them up when they fe...
I think anyone who opened their heart enough to love without restraint and subsequently were devastated by loss knows that in that moment you are forever changed; a apart of you is no longer whole. Some will never again love with that level of abando...
It does seem really hard to get consumers to do the right thing. It is stupid that we use two tons of steel, glass, and plastic to haul our sorry selves to the shopping mall. It's stupid that we put water in plastic bottles in Fiji and ship it here.
If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels...
As a child, when I lost things such as my precious pocketknife, I learned that if I prayed hard enough, I could usually find it. I was always able to find the lost cows I was entrusted with. Sometimes I had to pray more than once, but my prayers alwa...
The thing that probably trips me up the most are people getting tattoos of stuff that I've designed in my books. That always spins me out in a weird way. It seems like such a permanent commitment to something I've done. I don't know that I could do t...
Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most h...
How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten l...
Robert Ledgard: [as he shows Vera 'her' new body] It's a pity you can't see your whole body. [fondling 'her' breasts] Robert Ledgard: They don't seem pneumatic now, do they? They're like drops of water sliding along a glass surface.
I went to about one frat party a year. A year seemed to be enough time for me to forget how much I didn't like frat parties, and my friends would eventually convince me to go to one. Cheap beer, guys looking for a quick hook-up, and girls playing 'du...
In my stand up, I think I try to be less energetic because I feel embarrassed about how much enthusiasm I have. There's something about acting like I don't care, or if I act like I haven't spent enough time on it, it seems to go better. If I act like...
Wherever we are, any time of night or day, our bosses, junk-mailers, our parents can get to us. Sociologists have actually found that in recent years Americans are working fewer hours than 50 years ago, but we feel as if we're working more. We have m...
Minister: You seem to have a whole ward to yourself, my boy. Alex: Yes, sir, and a very lonely place it is too, sir, when I wake up in the middle of the night with my pain. Minister: Yes... well, good to see you on the mend!
Nicky Santoro: Now, notice how in the count room nobody ever seems to see anything. Somehow, somebody's always lookin' the other way. Now, look at these guys. They look busy, right? They're countin' money. Who wants to bother them? I mean, God forbid...
John Robie: Say something nice to her, Danielle. Danielle Foussard: She looks a lot older up close. [John Robie whimpers] Frances Stevens: To a mere child, anything over twenty might seem old. Danielle Foussard: A child? Shall we stand in shallower w...
[last lines] Casares: [voice over narration] What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Lik...
Ninny Threadgoode: I'm worried about my little friend Evelyn. She said her husband, Ed, would just be sitting around watching his sports on TV... and she has an urge to hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Janeen: Oh hell, that seems normal to me...
