Nick Naylor: Bobby Jay works for S.A.F.E.T.Y., the Society for the Advancement of Firearms and Effective Training for Youth. After watching the footage of the Kent State shootings, Bobby Jay, then seventeen, signed up for the National Guard so that h...
Janet Black: Doctor Manhattan as you know the Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face analogizing humankind's proximity to extinction, midnight representing the threat of nuclear war. As of now it stands at four minutes to midnight. Would you agree t...
Marty McFly: [watching a Honeymooners episode in 1955] Hey, hey, I've seen this one. I've seen this one. This is a classic. This is, uh, where Ralph dresses up as a man from space. Milton Baines: What do you mean, you've seen this? It's brand new. Ma...
Edward Cole: [to Carter, of expectations without a bucket list] What do you think happens now? I go back and sit around listening to people talking about mezzanine financing and subordinated debt pretending that I care about dead money. You go home t...
Nina: What happened? Thomas Leroy: She walked into the street and got hit by a car. And you know what? I'm almost sure she did it on purpose. Nina: How do you know? Thomas Leroy: Because everything Beth does comes from within. From some dark impulse....
The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children,...
What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when i...
It is getting dark. In the low mists over the hills, an orange glow broods, as if the trees are on fire. Bats are flooding out from the hundreds of caves that perforate these mountainsides. I watch them plunge into the mists without any hesitation, t...
My teacher, Ben Johnston, was convinced that our tuning is responsible for much of our cultural psychology, the fact that we are so geared toward progress and action and violence and so little attuned to introspection, contentment, and acquiescence. ...
Of course, I'd like to have fake legs. I would dance with a boy and then afterwards pull up my dress to show him my fake legs, just to watch him fall over from the shock of it. I'd do that with a hundred boys until I found the one who got down on his...
Not once not twice but at least a dozen times i have advanced an idea to people who thought i was either dreaming , imagining the impossible or just in over my head. When the birth of a rare idea lives to see the light of day it is astounding . I hav...
New Season No coats today. Buds bulge on chestnut trees, And on the doorstep of a big, old house A young man stands and plays his flute. I watch the silver notes fly up And circle in the blue sky above the traffic, Travelling where they will. And sud...
I can understand where he's coming from... I too was once secretly in love with you, and I could do nothing but watch from afar. Being close to you while pretending that we're nothing more than friends. The first time I touched you with sexual intent...
Nothing is ever truly set in stone. You and you hold the key to your life. When Fate's saying 'off yourself.' or Destiny is saying 'you're going to kill yourself anyway,', I want you to stand up and say 'screw you.' and go do something that makes you...
That had been the end of Communism. I had a feeling watching the tape that America would be next, but for once I kept my mouth shut. In my silence I felt our common ground: here we were, two men, neither young, neither with money, neither earning a p...
I ordered my favorite drink; vanilla iced blended coffee with whipped cream and caramel sauce on top. The whipped cream and caramel sauce were the best. Usually when no one was watching, I would lick the inside of the lid to get every last drop of th...
She leans over the desk to write and even though I feel bad for doing it, I watch her body as she does. Her shirt lifts just a little as she’s bending over and whether she’s aware of it or not, her lower back is exposed. I’ve spent the last eig...
What was dark will always be dark, I know that. Death is still death. Hatred will never be far, in this life. But also, there is light. It is everywhere. It floods this world--the world brims with it. Once, I sat by the Coe and watched a shaft of lig...
He watches the shadows cast by her hands as she sorts through their clothes scattered across the floor. The shape of her arms as she reaches up, slipping his black T-shirt over her head -- like victory. He considers the triumph of this moment, the sl...
But Malone was thinking now and as he watched the men lighting cigarettes for each other in the dark, having sex beneath the trees, he turned to his friend and said in a wondering voice: “Isn’t it strange that when we fall in love, this great dre...
After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug wi...
