For reasons that are both fair and foul - but mostly for fair reasons - we have come under the domain of a scientific-management system whose ambitions are endless. They want to manage every second of our lives, every expenditure that we make. And th...
I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed to play guitar. There's something - I don't want to sound ungrateful - but there's something very old-fashioned and traditional about it. You meet kids today whose grandparents were in punk bands. It's very old and ...
Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world…concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers ...
There are a lot of ways to make people not like you, but one of the most powerful - if least fair - is to be really, really successful. Nobody resents the guy who just lost his job. But the guy whose Internet start-up made him a billionaire at 25? Th...
I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben...
Nokes: [Watching Shakes undress and sees he's wearing a necklace] What the fuck is that hangin' around your neck? Take it off. Young Lorenzo 'Shakes' Carcaterra: It's Mary, you know, the mother of God. Nokes: [scoffs] I don't give a fuck whose mother...
Jim Cunningham: Now, I'm going to tell you a little story today. It's a heartbreakingly sad story about a young man whose life was completely destroyed by these instruments of fear. A young man, searching for love in all the wrong places. His name wa...
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: [writing to his mother, telling her that he's seen his first negroes amongst those fleeing the south] We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written but which will presently be as enviable and as renowned as any.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Before this war began, many of my regiment had never seen a Negro. Now the roads are choked with the dispossessed. We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written but which will presently be as enviable and as renow...
George Bailey: You're not talking to someone else? You know me, remember me, George Bailey? Mr. Potter: George Bailey. George Bailey, whose ship has just come in. Provided he has enough brains to climb aboard.
Toulouse-Lautrec: Christian, you may see me only as a drunken, vice-ridden gnome whose friends are just pimps and girls from the brothels. But I know about art and love, if only because I long for it with every fiber of my being.
Mr. Robertson: In order to protect our nation's citizens, it's important we keep certain government operations confidential. Wouldn't you agree? Jane: Yes, sir. Mr. Robertson: I work for an organization whose primary purpose is *not* space travel. It...
Tiffany: Not that I give a fuck about football or about your superstitions, but if it's me reading the signs, I don't send the Eagles guy whose personal motto is "Excelsior," to a fucking Giants game, especially when he's already in a legal situation...
Sergeant Howie: And what of the TRUE God? Whose glory, churches and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past? Now sir, what of him? Lord Summerisle: He's dead. Can't complain, had his chance and in modern parlance, blew it.
One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional ...
Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career s...
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into ...
It was in August or September of 1995 that I met Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana and I met through Oonagh Toffolo, whose husband was recovering from heart surgery at the Royal Brompton. At the time, I was working for Professor Yacoub, the heart surge...
I have spent seven of the 12 years I have been married a victim of political persecution. I must be the first male spouse being held hostage by a regime. I accept this, as Pakistan has traditional elements who find it hard to reconcile with a man who...
Sometimes I think that our laboratories are but little earthworks which men build about themselves, and whose puny tops too often conceal from view the Olympian heights; that we who work in these laboratories are but skilled artisans compared with th...
One of my favorite phobias is that girls, especially those whose tastes aren't routine, often don't get a fair break... It has come down through the generations, an inheritance of age-old customs which produced the corollary that women are bred to ti...