Ancient philosophy was framed by prodigies, Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. And even though their thoughts were deemed the aristocratic voice, they also had a thing for little boys. Katherine the Great so it's been said, needed large animals to be ful...
{ } I realised as if for the first time, the menace of these queer shaven men in lace and petticoats who had been intoning, responding, and going through ritual gestures at me. I realised something dreadful about them. They were thrusting an incredib...
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...
But that reminds me – and stop me if you've heard this one – of the day Jesus was watching the gates for St. Peter. Anyway, Jesus is giving him a hand one day when a man walks shuffling up to the path of Heaven. “ ‘What have you done to enter...
Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have...undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care! He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery....
I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of...
Eli: Dear Lord, thank you for giving me the strength and the conviction to complete the task you entrusted to me. Thank you for guiding me straight and true through the many obstacles in my path. And for keeping me resolute when all around seemed los...
Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the gates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax ma...
I had been brought up to be something of an intellectual, but there seemed at the time no connection between my newly formed ideas and the world to which I had returned. Indeed, I did not even recognize my ideas as ideas at all: they seemed to be cul...
I was Juliet and Quinn was Romeo, and the lines weren't dead black-and-white words on a page but somehow alive, as natural and real as the argument we'd had about the spider and the fly. The rows of empty seats were gone, and we were in a candlelit b...
Such fatigues and hardship as these serve to wean me more from the earth; and, I trust, will make heaven the sweeter. Formerly, when I was thus exposed to cold, rain, etc., I was ready to please myself with the thoughts of enjoying a comfortable hous...
Going through the customs dampened them further. Customs inspectors must have a mental twist that makes them suspicious of innocence. Dewy-eyed honeymooners, red-cheeked provincials, and helpless little old ladies lash them into frenzied investigatio...
[first lines] Narrator: With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But, not everybody could get to Lisbon di...
[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...
Terence Mann: Ray, there was a reason they chose me, just as there was a reason they chose you and this field. Ray Kinsella: Why? Terence Mann: I gave an interview. Ray Kinsella: What interview? What are you talking about? Terence Mann: The one about...
Trini 'Gordo' Garcia: In France, we hit the beach right after D-Day and fought through all those fucking hedgerows. We finally broke out into open country. And bypassed all these Kraut divisions. We linked up with the Canadians and British and trappe...
[gathering wood to shore up the tunnels, Hilts removes the wooden slats from bunk beds in the sleeping area of the prisoner barracks, holding a stack of them, and walks carefully out into the hallway] Cavendish: [passes Hilts in the hallway on his wa...
Receptionist: I can't resist! You usually move through here so quickly and I just have so many questions I want to ask you. You have no idea what your work means to me. Melvin Udall: What does it mean to you? Receptionist: [stands up] When somebody o...
[first lines] Patrick Kenzie: I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they'd accomplished. The bodies ar...
[first lines] Sig Mickelson: In 1935, Ed Murrow began his career with CBS. When World War II broke out, it was his voice that brought the Battle of Britain home to us, through his "This Is London" radio series. He started with us all, many of us here...
Puppet Master: I refer to myself as an intelligent life form because I am sentient and I am able to recognize my own existence, but in my present state I am still incomplete. I lack the most basic processes inherent in all living organisms: reproduci...
