Percy Wetmore: [yells repeatedly as he brings John Coffey in] Dead man! Dead man walking! We got a dead man walking, here! Paul Edgecomb: Jesus, please us! What is he yelling about? Percy Wetmore: [continues yelling] Dead man! Dead man walking! Dead ...
Minny Jackson: [Johnny's escorted Minny to the house where Celia has an elegant meal on the table] What's this? Celia Foote: [proudly] I cooked it all by myself. Johnny Foote: Yes she did. She was up all night. Celia Foote: I wanted to do something s...
Big Joe: According to this map, we got a river to cross before we get into this town of yours. Kelly: Yeah, well there's a bridge right here, six miles out. Big Joe: There was a bridge. The Air Corps knocked every bridge out of that river months ago....
Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.: As best I can figure it, we're on the wrong beach. The control boat must have been confused by the smoke from the naval bombardment. They landed us about a mile and a quarter south of where we were supposed to land....
Holly Sargis: [voice over narration] They hadn't found but one set of bones in the ashes of the house so we knew they'd be looking for us. Kit made sure we'd be prepared. He gave me lectures on how a gun works, how to take it apart, and put it back t...
Detective Greenly: These guys are miles away by now, but if you wanna beat your head against a wall, then here's what you're looking for: they're scared, like two little bunny rabbits. Anything in a uniform or flashing blue lights is gonna spook 'em,...
What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the h...
A midst deceit I found the truth; there in the rough I found a diamond. And from the moment we met, I think of no one else Today I choose to be, to live and breathe; to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse. And you, the object of my delight: a l...
We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize sh...
But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in f...
There were people dying everywhere getting massacred in every town and village, there were people being picked up and thrown into dark jails in unknown parts, there were dungeons in the city where hundreds of young men were kept in heavy chains and f...
Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, ...
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of ...
While conversion of sugars to ethanol is the predominant reaction, it is only one of potentially thousands of biochemical reactions taking place during fermentation. As a result, wine contains trace amounts of a large number of organic acids, esters,...
In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious political movement for social equality. It is the second wave of the most important revolution in history. Its aim: the overthrow of the oldest, most rigid class/cast...
On a nightstand in a teenager’s room, a glass vase filled with violets leans precariously against a wall. The only thing saving the vase from a thousand-piece death on the hardwood floor is the groove in the nightstand’s surface that catches the ...
If people lived to be a thousand years old, there’d be extreme inequality, based not on class like now, but on genetics. Think how far behind unmotivated and lazy people lag now after only 65 years on earth, and then multiply that by 15.
There’s another story I know. This one doesn’t have any swords or visions. This one is about a boy who found a girl during a terrible time.” “How did it turn out?” “I don’t know, but I do know the boy doesn’t regret it. Not a minute. ...
Currently spirituality is at an ebb in the more advanced technological societies. This in part because memes that validate spiritual order tend to lose their credibility with time, and need to be recast in new forms again and again. At present we are...
At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We ...
The trouble with being an angel on Earth was that he was still a man. He got hungry. He thirsted. His lungs clamored without the draw of air. And for this woman, the only one in a thousand years, his body and soul ached. The trick was to will his min...
