I have no particular plan in life - and that's something I rather like. Most things that people do seem to me to be rather dull and silly. In my ideal life I'd be left alone to read - Mamie Doran
Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this and it will, unfortun...
Of the many species that have existed on earth--estimates run as high as fifty billion--more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error. ...
Never be possessive. If a female friend lets on that she is going out with another man, be kind and understanding. If she says she would like to go out with the Dallas Cowboys, including the coaching staff, the same rule applies.
At the height of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program, which nearly succeeded in building a bomb in 1991, Tuwaitha incorporated research reactors, uranium mining and enrichment facilities, chemical engineering plants and an explosives fabricati...
Friend of mine, a smart journalist, had his iPad stolen. He couldn't help that - the thief broke into his house. But his private, personal data wasn't stolen, exactly. Donated, more like. He had no passcode set on the iPad.
There's much talk about how there can't be democracy in a region that has problems of illiteracy and poverty. But I bring a different idea to the table when I say, 'Guys, I come from India. I'm more optimistic coming from where I'm coming.'
We've had a series of major news stories that have brought in viewers who either were sampling to see what else was available or were normal news watchers. The Florida recount and the end of the election was a huge development. And then 9/11 came alo...
In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people's words - I just didn't get the appeal of that.
The hazards posed by Near-Earth Asteroids are assessed by Sentry, a computer system developed by the Near-Earth Objects Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The software factors together a cosmic rock's coordinates, distance,...
I was vaguely aware that people used to hijack planes to Cuba. But I didn't know much about how often it happened and what the motives were. I started looking into what was going on back then, and I was blown away by how common hijacking once was.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit differen...
The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in ...
In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?'
As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing - one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey.
You would like me to say that the veil will be ripped from the voters' eyes sometime between now and November, thereby restoring the proper version of Democracy to the House and Senate. I won't say that, of course. The simple reason is, I don't know.
The Senate was an odd compromise between the founders and the early leaders of the republic who wanted a single house which was based on popular sovereignty representing the people and those founders who wanted two houses, the upper house, the Senate...
I know I'm never going to probably see the Taj Mahal or, you know, climb Mt. Everest, but I can still maybe influence peoples' way of thinking by a story that I do, by something I learn about the world.
In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone's writing all day long - sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they're James Cameron's Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.
Irony has seeped into the felt of any fedora hat I have ever owned - not out of any wish of mine, but out of necessity. A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me.
If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the chil...
