The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad capitaine says so, you are shifted abruptly in the m...
Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors. The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside. Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them. Their day is greedy as a lariat in the ai...
I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church--was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, r...
When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before...We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We...
Late one night, during a toss-and-turn fretful sleep, I pondered my crisis. No solutions were on the horizon. I, again, wasted my psychic energy with prayer. Nothing. No angel on a white cloud. No rainbow’s pot of gold. No way to control the people...
They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. Even in sensible school shoes, she shuffled as though baref...
Carlito: [voiceover and closing narration] Sorry boys, all the stitches in the world can't sew me together again. Lay down... lay down. Gonna stretch me out in Fernandez funeral home on Hun and Ninth street. Always knew I'd make a stop there, but a l...
[Pommeroy is reading to the class from the 1954 short story "The Destructors" by Graham Greene] Karen Pommeroy: "There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling and the Barrow Boys would hea...
Uther: Merlin! You come when you're not asked... and pay no heed when I call you! Merlin: Oh, I have slept... for nine moons. What I did for you wasn't easy. Now you must pay me... the child is mine, Uther... you swore an oath. Uther: They were hasty...
Uther: Where have you been? Merlin: I have walked my way since the beginning of time. Sometimes I give, sometimes I take, it is mine to know which and when! Uther: You must help me, Merlin! Merlin: Must I? Uther: I am your King! Merlin: So! You need ...
Narrator: Tyler was a night person. While the rest of us were sleeping, he worked. He had one part time job as a projectionist. See, a movie doesn't come all on one big reel. It comes on a few. So someone has to be there to switch the projectors at t...
Amsterdam Vallon: In the end, they put candles on the bodies so's their friends, if they had any, could know them in the dark. The city did this free of charge. Shang, Jimmy Spoils, Hell-cat, McGloin, and more. Friend or foe, didn't make no differenc...
Harry Potter: I don't care about a bloody wedding! No matter whose it is. I have to start searching for the Horcruxes. It's the only chance we have to beat him. And the longer we wait, the stronger he gets. Ron Weasley: Tonight's not that night, mate...
Kevin McCallister: Everyone in this family *hates* me! Kate McCallister: Then maybe you should ask Santa for a new family. Kevin McCallister: I don't want another family. I don't want any family. Families suck! Kate McCallister: Just stay up there. I...
Laurie: [sees Annie wearing a shirt because her clothes are in the laundry] Oh, fancy! Annie Brackett: This has not been my night. I spilled butter all over my clothes, they're in the wash. I got stuck in the laundry room... Laurie: Listen, I want yo...
Chief Gillespie: Just once in my life, I'm gonna own my temper. I'm telling you that you're gonna stay here. You're gonna stay here if I have to go inside and call your chief of police and have him remind you of what he told you to do. But I don't th...
Norm: Now you've got about an hour, but don't leave the theater. Where are you going, John? John: [with a dancing girl] She's gonna show me her stamp collection. Paul: [also with a girl] So's mine. Norm: John, I'm talking to you. This final run-throu...
Shosanna Dreyfus: [in French; subtitled] I am going to burn down the cinema on Nazi night. And if I'm going to burn down the cinema, which I am, we both know you're not going to let me do it by myself. Because you love me. And I love you. And you're ...
[Peter watches as Ellie dunks her donut] Peter Warne: Say, where'd you learn to dunk? In finishing school? Ellie Andrews: Aw, now don't you start telling me I shouldn't dunk. Peter Warne: Of course you shouldn't - you don't know how to do it. Dunking...
Peter Warne: You know, I had you pegged right from the jump. Just a spoiled brat of a rich father. The only way you get anything is to buy it, isn't it? You're in a jam and all you can think of is your money. It never fails, does it? Ever hear of the...
[listening to BBC reporter Hugh Elder's broadcast on the radio] Jon Swain: Where do they get this crap? Al Rockoff: That guy across the gate there. The little guy. Could we all not look at once, please? I have it on reliable sources that that's none ...
