[first lines] Phil: Somebody asked me today, "Phil, if you could be anywhere in the world, where would you like to be?" And I said to him, "Prob'ly right here - Elko, Nevada, our nation's high at 79 today." Out in California, they're gonna have some ...
Marty McFly: Where are we? When are we? Doc: We're descending toward Hill Valley, California, at 4:29 pm, on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015. Marty McFly: 2015? You mean we're in the future? Jennifer: Future? Marty, what do you mean? How can we be in t...
Then why was his tongue in your mouth? Was he conducting a clinical test of your gag reflex?" He smiled, but not nicely. "How is your gag reflex, Ms. Lane? Are you a hair trigger?" Barrons likes to use sexual innuendo to try to shut me up. I think he...
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of h...
We must also remember that in every little village-god and every little superstitious custom is that which we are accustomed to call our religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are we to obey, and which not to obey? T...
Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to...
Slim is queer and though Nelson isn't supposed to mind that he does. He also minds that there are a couple of slick blacks making it at the party and that one little white girl with that grayish kind of sharp-chinned Polack face from the south side o...
After midday, the rain eased, and the Land Rover rode into Pokhara on a shaft of storm light. Next day there was humid sun and shifting southern skies, but to the north a deep tumult of swirling grays was all that could be seen of the Himalaya. At du...
Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills,—with the great Fujiyama growing f...
It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the sk...
There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly well for many years. He had not only monitored the co...
Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscienc...
What caused me to undertake the catalog was the nebula I discovered above the southern horn of Taurus on September 12, 1758, while observing the comet of that year. ... This nebula had such a resemblance to a comet in its form and brightness that I e...
Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair: Southern China? We've never even admitted we sent troops into China. General Hummel: Who is this? Identify yourself! Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair: White House Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair, General. General Hummel: ...
I can think of no sadder example of our food paradigm than two posters taped to the window of a California IHOP. One is a colorful photo of pancakes heaped with bananas, strawberries, nuts, syrups and whipped cream with the caption, 'Welcome to Parad...
It was one of those decisions that shouldn't have been so easy to get so wrong. Go on your own or take the half wasted waif. She was wearing denim hotpants with a pink vest top, and was hanging off his arm, more for stability than closeness, so he pr...
Don't get me wrong. Sacramento is a lovely place, particularly for those with a fondness for methamphetamines. For the meth-addled, Sacramento had conveniently placed a Greyhound bus station just yards from the statehouse where Austria's finest was s...
[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon] I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy na...
[about to have sex in a car behind his restaurant] Nicky Santoro: I fly stuff in fresh every day. I get bread from back home, I get fish from California, and you can always tell a great kitchen like ours 'cause of the milk-fed veal. That's the secret...
Elle Driver: She put a Black Mamba in his camper. [pause] Elle Driver: I got her, sweety. [pause] Elle Driver: She's dead. [pause] Elle Driver: Let me put it this way. If you ever start feeling sentimental, go to Barstow, California. When you get her...
What, in nature," Kit asked, "is the most beautiful thing you've seen? Or the most terrible?" "The Dismals," Giles answered promptly. "A beautiful aberration in the lay of the land--North Alabama. A section mysteriously lowered, strewn with boulders,...
