Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immens...
Everybody in those days was a foreigner, no matter where they were born; as industrial modernization had its way with people and places, no one was native to the transformation of the United States from an agricultural economy to the foremost industr...
My experience with life is that it's very fragmented. In one place certain kinds of thing occur, and in another place a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences. I guess, in painting, it ...
Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in ou...
I feel lucky I didn't become that newspaper cartoonist I wanted to be because in the U.S. so many newspapers have suffered circulation declines, and some have folded. What's fun about being an author is I reach a much bigger audience, and there is so...
It's possible to spend every waking hour here on the ninth floor and not get out of the office. And this isn't the real world in here. And contrary to public opinion, I'm not incredibly poll-driven. They are an ongoing indicator of how we are going, ...
Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob...
Otto Meyer: [after being asked by Irwin the gas station attendant about how many people Lennie Pike has killed] Don't be morbid, just tie him up until the boys in the white jackets gets here.
Dr. Ellie Sattler: We can make it if we run. Muldoon: No, we can't. Dr. Ellie Sattler: Why not? Muldoon: Because we are being hunted. Dr. Ellie Sattler: Oh God. Muldoon: In the bushes straight ahead. It's all right. Dr. Ellie Sattler: Like hell it is...
I've talked a lot with Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem. Being on Team PokerStars with them has helped me out quite a bit. I've traveled around Europe playing with them. I've also talked with Robert Williamson here and there and Jim Worth. So I've had some...
We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someon...
Liesel Meminger: I keep thinking about Max, wondering where he is. Hans Hubermann: Me too. I'm not sure what it all meant. Everything he went through. Everything we did. Liesel Meminger: We were just being people. That's what people do.
From the happy-go-lucky days of oil exploration and drilling, when a lot of easy sources were being found and easily managed, we're gotten ourselves into this sort of apocalyptic time. We're willing to destroy almost everything, risk almost anything,...
When I was a child, my behavior was far from being what most people would label 'intelligent.' It was often limited, repetitive and anti-social. I could not do many of the things that most people take for granted, such as looking someone in the eye o...
Whether you're president or speaker, if you're wrong, we need to stand up and point it out. That's what Martin Luther King had talked about: being judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. So some of us pounded away on som...
We're in an inflection point where it's cheaper to learn to read on a tablet computer than it is to learn to read on paper. And that being the case, it's only a matter of time before every 6-year-old kid has a tablet computer, and we know for a fact,...
I was onstage one night and was singing. I hit one note, and I just doubled over. It was like being punched hard in the back. I couldn't put my back up on the plane seat because of the pain. I got massages, thinking it was muscle spasms. The doctor t...
In running, I know that I can train as much as I want and I'm never going to break the world record for the five miles. It's partly genetics; I'm just not built for it. But if I worked really hard, I might be able to cut my time by half. Could I do t...
The first time I worked with colors was by making these mosaics of Pantone swatches. They end up being very large pictures, and I photographed with a very large camera - an 8x10 camera. So you can see the surface of every single swatch - like in this...
Ms. Ginny Stroud: Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, wh...
Donnie: [discussing his parents] They didn't buy me what I wanted for Christmas. Dr. Lilian Thurman: What did you want for Christmas that year? Donnie: Hungry, Hungry Hippos. Dr. Lilian Thurman: And how did you feel, being denied these Hungry, Hungry...
