For years, I worked seven-day weeks, through birthdays and most public holidays, Christmases and New Year’s Eves included. I worked mornings and afternoons, resuming work after dinner. I remember feeling as if life were a protracted exercise in pul...
She was afraid to suggest to him that to most people, nothing "happens." That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. T...
I don't understand how people can stand next to you one year,and next year, they cannot. They're going crazy, screaming. They can't take it that you're there. But last year I was in the same club,walking around,lonely like a motherfucker. Couldn't ge...
It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees...
When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to sp...
Growing up, I was a little hippie kid. I went to some good concerts... Amnesty International with Bob Dylan and Tracy Chapman... The best concert I ever went to was this one at the Cow Palace my freshman year in college on New Year's Eve. It was Pear...
One hundred fifty years is not long in the reckoning of a hill. But to a man it's long enough. One hundred fifty years is a week end to a redwood tree, but to a man it's two full lifetimes. One hundred fifty years is a twinkle to a star, but to a man...
When I was 15 years old, I read an article about Ivan Boesky, the well-known takeover trader - turned out years later it was all on inside information! But before that came to light, he was very successful, very flamboyant. And I thought, 'This is wh...
...Imagine having to ask whether you can go barefoot or not... But she remembers similar requests and prohibitions now, from twenty years and more back. "The childhood years are the best years of your life..." Whoever coined that was an unmitigated f...
I went to see the stock exchange when I was 18 years old. I'm not a Wall Street lawyer, I'm a Stanwix Street lawyer. Stanwix Street is a street in downtown Pittsburgh. One of the clients is Mellon Bank, which merged with the Bank of New York Mellon a...
Stop…stop, that’s the next generation of fans… How dare you pass judgment on those 12-year-old girls who like vampires! They need to be encouraged because in six years they’ll be 18-year-old girls who like vampires and are into all sorts of g...
When I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, I heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at t...
Dudley Dursley: [on Dudley's birthday] How many are there? Uncle Vernon: 36, counted them myself. Dudley Dursley: 36! But last year, last year I had 37! Uncle Vernon: Yes, yes, but some of them are quite a bit bigger than last year. Dudley Dursley: I...
Jack Walsh: I know my rights. You owe me phone calls. Alonzo Mosely: What should be of paramount importance to you right now is not the phone calls, it's the fact that you're gonna spend ten years for impersonating a federal agent. Jack Walsh: 10 yea...
I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I ...
No wise man takes responsibility for an eighteen-year-old daughter.
Better ride a good horse for a year than an ass all your life.
Even a thief takes ten years to learn his trade.
Plan your life at New Year's eve, your day at dawn.
A day to come seems longer than a year that's gone.
Waking up in India is like waking up to life itself.
