At the age of nine, I could cross the length of Glasgow on a succession of buses, wearing regulation garter-topped stockings and compulsory cap and - if I'd done well enough to earn the honour in last week's test - with a First World War medal on a s...
I study the chessboard and concede defeat. "You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.
Baby, I was in a war. Of course I get it. That's where all the bad in the world comes from. Guys who like being mean. I was that guy once. We were all that guy, for at least a minute. We had to be.
...there was apparent in all a sort of anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness of some great, unfathomable mystery being accomplished... the most solemn mystery in the world was being accomplished. Evening passed, night came on. And th...
In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may...
Raistlin opened his eyes, looking at her without recognition. And in them, she saw deep, undying sorrow--the look of one who has been permitted to enter a realm of deadly, perilous beauty, and who now finds himself, once more, cast down into the grey...
But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house". The moral of 'Snow White' is...
My theory is that Kurt had a lot of residual pain from his childhood. And when you pile that on top of his experience in World War II - he was in Dresden when it was bombed and saw a city annihilated. When you combine those two things, my impression ...
I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Ev...
There aren't many great passages written about food, but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called 'Horned Pigeon.' He had been on the run and hadn't eaten for a week, and his description of t...
It just seems to me that the world's kind of a mess, and the more messy it gets, the more interested I am in escapist fare. Having a good time is something that isn't about the war in Iraq or the Asian flu or the Kyoto protocol - things that are horr...
You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to wa...
The world is a different place in this new century, [...]. And we are a different people. My visions still come but no one listens any longer to what they tell us, what they warn us. I knew even as a young woman that destruction bred on the horizon. ...
C. Everett 'Chic' Koop became U.S. Surgeon General under President Reagan. He was a world renowned pediatric surgeon who had a tumultuous Senate confirmation process due to partisanship. Chic took office in January 1982, a time of 'tobacco wars' and ...
[from trailer] Alexander Pierce: Are you ready for the world to see you as you really are? Look out the window, you know how the game works: disorder, war, all it takes is one step. Steve Rogers: I thought the punishment usually came AFTER the crime.
[first lines] Title Cards: Note, any resemblance between Hynkle the Dictator and the Jewish Barber is purely co-incidental. Title Cards: This is a story of a period between two World Wars - an interim in which Insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nose ...
Narzug: [to Legolas and Thranduil] Your world will burn. Legolas: What are you talking about? Speak! Narzug: Our time has come again. My master serves the one. Do you understand now, Elfling? Death is upon you! The flames of war are upon you.
Treebeard: We Ents cannot hold back this storm. We must weather such things as we have always done. Merry: How can that be your decision? Treebeard: This is not our war. Merry: But you're part of this world, aren't you?... You must help... please.
Patton: I've always felt that I was destined for some great achievement, what I don't know. Sgt. William Meeks: Yes, sir. Patton: The last great opportunity of a lifetime - an entire world at war, and I'm left out of it? God will not permit this to h...
Ted Striker: It's Lieutenant Hurwitz. Severe shell-shock. Thinks he's Ethel Merman. Lieutenant Hurwitz: [singing] You'll be swell, you'll be great. Gonna have the whole world on a plate. Startin' here, startin' now. Honey, everything's comin' up rose...
Of all the writers I have read, Vladimir Nabokov has made the biggest impression on me because he, despite living through the 1917 February Revolution, forced exile amidst the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, the two World Wars and quite a lot of contr...
