Determining the value of individual texts has been an ideological scuffle in literary criticism for centuries: but the environmental cost of printing them hauls this dispute from the ivory tower into day-to-day decision-making. Is it right to write? ...
The collapse of the Tower of Babel is perhaps the central urban myth. It is certainly the most disquieting. In Babylon, the great city that fascinated and horrified the Biblical writers, people of different races and languages, drawn together in purs...
Official motto of the White House economic team: Those who can, do. Those who can't, fantasize in the classroom, fail in Washington and then return to the Ivy Tower to train the next generation of egghead economic saboteurs. Life is good for left-win...
I love roller coasters that make my stomach drop. One ride in Las Vegas, the Big Shot, straps you into a row of seats and catapults you into the air from the top of the Stratosphere Tower - then plummets back down. I ride it over and over; it's exhil...
I was in Tower Records in San Francisco a few weeks ago, buying some cassettes, and a couple of people recognized me and ran up with albums, and I just wanted to cover my face and have a seizure or something. I want people to just go away.
The years, the months, the days, and the hours have flown by my open window. Here and there an incident, a towering moment, a naked memory, an etched countenance, a whisper in the dark, a golden glow these and much more are the woven fabric of the ti...
Watching the completed version of The Two Towers for example, I was very conscious of scenes - sometimes whole sequences - that I had seen being filmed or edited but which hadn't made it into the final cut.
People from all over the world were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. They came from many different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu believers were killed together as they worked in the to...
Larry wanted us to reposition the tower. We wouldn't, and won't. He's been holding back our fees. We want to get paid. And that's it. It'll get solved and we'll carry on with planning Ground Zero.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: 'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.
It was men who stopped slavery. It was men who ran up the stairs in the Twin Towers to rescue people. It was men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats of the Titanic. Men are made to take risks and live passionately on behalf of others.
It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.
Roy Neary: [as Lacombe and Laughlin show him a drawing of Devil's Tower] Yeah, I've got one just like it in my living room. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?
[Heinrich and two other crewmen carry Kriechbaum to the conning tower ladder] Kriechbaum: Thank you, Heinrich. Heinrich: Don't mention it. Look, the sun's still shining. [shouting] Heinrich: Lift him!
Sussex: Princess Elizabeth. You are accused of conspiring with Sir Thomas Wyatt and others against Her Sovereign Majesty, and are arrested for treason. I have been commanded to take you hence from this place... to the Tower.
[a wall of soldiers line the ramparts - the top of Gimli's helm barely peeks over the top] Gimli: [to Legolas] You could have picked a better spot.
Gandalf: [to Grima] Be silent. Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I did not pass through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm.
Theoden: Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn. Forth, Eorlingas!
[after meeting with Gandalf in Fangorn Forest] Aragorn: In one thing you haven't changed, my friend - you still speak in riddles.
Treebeard: You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.
Legolas: Forgive me. I mistook you for Saruman. Gandalf: I am Saruman. Or rather, Saruman as he should have been.
