Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatoza attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese-twin inf...
Henry Barthes: How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you? Henry Barthes: Doublethink. To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they're false. Henry Barthes: Examples of this in everyday life: "Oh, I need to be pr...
Joey Gazelle: [holding her at gunpoint while she holds her baby] Now you listen to me, Conchita. You listen to me real good. I don't want to hurt Manny. Conchita: Okay. Joey Gazelle: All right? I don't want to hurt him, but he has something that belo...
[Darth Vader has just learned of Admiral Ozzel's big blunder, and activates a viewscreen] Admiral Ozzel: [appearing onscreen with Captain Piett] Lord Vader, the fleet has moved out of lightspeed and we're preparing to... [Ozzel stops, and suddenly be...
Sherlock Holmes: You've never complained about my methods before. Dr. John Watson: I'm not complaining. Sherlock Holmes: You're not? What do you call this? Dr. John Watson: I never complain! How am I complaining? When do I ever complain about you pra...
Spock Prime: You are, in fact, the Mr. Scott who postulated the theory of transwarp beaming? Scotty: That's what I'm talking about! How do you think I wound up here? Had a little debate with my instructor on relativistic physics and how it pertains t...
Christopher Pike: Mr. Spock, I'm leaving you in command of the Enterprise. Once we have transport capability and communications back up, you'll contact Starfleet and report what the hell's going on here. And if all else fails, fall back, rendezvous w...
But you didn’t mention Orrigar I, the first king of the House of Chaldarina. He put an end to years of unrest and civil strife. Neither did you mention Ronnick II, the one who reformed the monetary system and forbade the Great Houses to mint their ...
you make me laugh, with your metaphysical anguish, its just that you're scared silly, frightened of life, of men of action, of action itself, of lack of order. But everything is disorder, dear boy. Vegetable, mineral and animal, all disorder, and so ...
You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing j...
If biologists have ignored self-organization, it is not because self-ordering is not pervasive and profound. It is because we biologists have yet to understand how to think about systems governed simultaneously by two sources of order, Yet who seeing...
A cemetery?" I chuckle, but the pitch is a bit higher than I expected. "At night? With a full moon? Um ... did you see any, uh, zombies, you, while you were there?" Shiko blinks at me a few times. "No" I slump in relief. "Thank God. I mean, I don't w...
There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, a...
There’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid...
Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, an...
Labelling is no longer a liberating political act but a necessity in order to gain entrance into the academic industrial complex and other discussions and spaces. For example, if so called “radical” or “progressive” people don’t hear enough...
She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to ...
All other trades are contained in that of war. Is that why war endures? No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. That's your notion. The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing...
One morning indeed, I felt a sudden misgiving that she not only had left the house but had gone for good: I had just heard the sound of a door which seemed to me to be that of her room. On tiptoe I crept towards the room, opened the door, stood upon ...
I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle ...
The stakes involved in Washington policy debates are often so high-- whether we send our young men and women to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward-- that even small differences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party lo...
