People from Los Angeles

"In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior."

"TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."

"I think they called me the closest thing to a God of the Internet. But at the end, that article wasn’t very complimentary, because the author suggested that I wasn’t doing a very good job, and that I ought to be replaced by a "professional." Of course, there isn’t any "God of the Internet." The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together."

"He worked quietly for years as keeper of the RFCs and final arbiter in technical matters when consensus couldn’t be reached. Postel believed that decisions he had made in the course of his work over the years had been for the good of the community and that starting a company to profit from those activities would have amounted to a violation of public trust."

"God, at least in the West, is often represented as a man with a flowing beard and sandals... if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel, a man who matches that description to a T. Mr. Postel's claim to cyber-divinity, besides his appearance, is that he is the chairman and, in effect, the sole member of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the organization that coordinates almost all Internet addresses."

"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there."

"Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something."

"And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is."

"Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing."

"Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call."

"Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and shm calls), so I added them. If that bothers you, you can always undefine them in config.sh."

"I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get."

"I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes..."

"Piet van Oostrum: I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG? Larry Wall: Let's call it an accidental feature."

"(To someone at New York University) If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York."

"If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally..."

"I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl."

"I'm sure that that could be indented more readably, but I'm scared of the awk parser."

"It is, of course, written in Perl. Translation to C is left as an exercise for the reader."

"It's all magic."

"It's documented in The Book, somewhere..."

"It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all..."

"Dan Smith: I've tried (in vi) 'g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/'...but that doesn't cut it. Any ideas? (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution). Larry Wall: In the first pass, install perl."

"Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality..."

"Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature"

"Perl programming is an *empirical* science!"

"Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't understand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses Perl."

"Real programmers can write assembly code in any language."

"The only disadvantage I see is that it would force everyone to get Perl. Horrors."

"There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make the parser more complex. I do, occasionally, struggle feebly against complexity..."

"There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket. (It may be, but don't think it."

"Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly..."

"What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwards?"

"You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?"

"All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory..."

"Besides, including <std_ice_cubes.h> is a fatal error on machines that don't have it yet. Bad language design, there..."

"Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally."

"Hey, I had to let awk be better at *something*..."

"If I allowed 'next $label' then I'd also have to allow 'goto $label', and I don't think you really want that..."

"In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is."

"I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident."

"It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers."

"I won't mention any names, because I don't want to get sun4's into trouble..."

"Just don't create a file called -rf."

"last|perl -pe '$_ x=/(..:.)...(.*)/&&"'$1'"ge$1&&"'$1'"lt$2' That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat..."

"No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyway..."

"Perl itself is usually pretty good about telling you what you shouldn't do."

"Sorry. My testing organization is either too small, or too large, depending on how you look at it."

"There are many times when you want it to ignore the rest of the string just like atof() does. Oddly enough, Perl calls atof(). How convenient."

"We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise."

"... an initial underscore already conveys strong feelings of magicalness to a C programmer."

"And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose)."

": And it goes against the grain of building small tools. Innocent, Your Honor. Perl users build small tools all day long."

"But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news."

"Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs."

"If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason."

"If you want to see useful Perl examples, we can certainly arrange to have comp.lang.misc flooded with them, but I don't think that would help the advance of civilization."

"> (It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.) Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative."

"Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy..."

"Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. &#91;Was that sufficiently incendiary?&#93;"

"There ain't nothin' in this world that's worth being a snot over."

"...this does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head."

"Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time."

"What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"

"You have to admit that it's difficult to misplace the Perl sources."

"Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi."

"Well, enough clowning around. Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as 'Unix'."

"Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is."

"Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."

"I don't like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude."

"I want to see people using Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but also socially."

"The whole history of computers is rampant with cheerleading at best and bigotry at worst."

"If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them."

"As usual, I'm overstating the case to knock a few neurons loose, but the truth is usually somewhere in the muddle, uh, middle."

"Odd that we think definitions are definitive."

": But for some things, Perl just isn't the optimal choice. (yet)"

"I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious."

"If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new witticism just for you."

"So far we've managed to avoid turning Perl into APL."

"Not that I have anything much against redundancy. But I said that already."

"They can always run stderr through uniq."

"I'd put my money where my mouth is, but my mouth keeps moving."

"Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl if I think they improve the language."

"Call me bored, but don't call me boring."

"I think $&#91; is more like a coelacanth than a mastadon."

"We question most of the mantras around here periodically, in case you hadn't noticed."

"That could certainly be done, but I don't want to fall into the Forth trap, where every running Forth implementation is really a different language."

"Tcl long ago fell into the Forth trap, and is now trying desperately to extricate itself (with some help from Sun's marketing department)."

"The whole intent of Perl 5's module system was to encourage the growth of Perl culture rather than the Perl core."

"Randal can write one-liners again. Everyone is happy, and peace spreads over the whole Earth."

"Life gets boring, someone invents another necessity, and once again we turn the crank on the screwjack of progress hoping that nobody gets screwed."

"No prisoner's dilemma here. Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria."

"P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did..."

"You can prove anything by mentioning another computer language."

"I think you didn't get a reply because you used the terms 'correct' and 'proper', neither of which has much meaning in Perl culture."

"I'm sure a mathematician would claim that 0 and 1 are both very interesting numbers."

"True, it returns &#39; &#39; for false, but &#39; &#39; is an even more interesting number than 0."

"Any false value is gonna be fairly boring in Perl, mathematicians notwithstanding."

"We didn't put in ^^ because then we'd have to keep telling people what it means, and then we'd have to keep telling them why it doesn't short circuit. :-/"

"Anybody want a binary telemetry frame editor written in Perl?"

"Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies."

"Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers."

"Personally, I like to defiantly split my infinitives."

"Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself."

"The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all."

"The following two statements are usually both true: There's not enough documentation. There's too much documentation."

"Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches."

"The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way."

"At many levels, Perl is a 'diagonal' language."

"I'm serious about thinking through all the possibilities before we settle on anything. All things have the advantages of their disadvantages, and vice versa."

"Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future."

"Sometimes we choose the generalization. Sometimes we don't."

"I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either."

"It's appositival, if it's there. And it doesn't have to be there. And it's really obvious that it's there when it's there."

"Oh, get ahold of yourself. Nobody's proposing that we parse English."

"As with all the other proposals, it's basically just a list of words. You can deal with that..."

"I hope I'm not getting so famous that I can't think out load &#91;sic&#93; anymore."

"It would be possible to optimize some forms of goto, but I haven't bothered."

"A 'goto' in Perl falls into the category of hard things that should be possible, not easy things that should be easy."

"How do Crays and Alphas handle the POSIX problem?"

"Well, that's more-or-less what I was saying, though obviously addition is a little more cosmic than the bitwise operators."

"You tell it that it's indicative by appending $!. That's why we made $! such a short variable name, after all."

"The choice of approaches could be made the responsibility of the programmer."

"As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer."

"If you're going to define a shortcut, then make it the base &#91;sic&#93; darn shortcut you can."

"It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a pleasant day."

"It's getting harder and harder to think out loud. One of these days someone's gonna go off and kill Thomas a'Becket for me..."

"I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days."

"But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason for leaving capabilities out of Perl."

"Oh, wait, that was Randal...nevermind..."

"P.S. I suppose I really should be nicer to people today, considering I'll be singing in Billy Graham's choir tonight..."

"Magically turning people's old scalar contexts into list contexts is a recipe for several kinds of disaster."

"And we can always supply them with a program that makes identical files into links to a single file."

"I wasn't recommending that we make the links for them, only provide them with the tools to do so if they want to take the gamble (or the gambol)."

"This has been planned for some time. I guess we'll just have to find someone with an exceptionally round tuit."

"switch (ref $@) { OverflowError => warn 'Dam needs to be drained'; DomainError => warn 'King needs to be trained'; NuclearWarError => die; }"

"I surely do hope that's a syntax error."

"Anyway, my money is still on use strict vars . . ."

"If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an instant bug that's easily fixed. Whoopee."

"I don't think it's worth washing hogs over."

"It's certainly easy to calculate the average attendance for Perl conferences."

"Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like routers."

"Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings. (With 8.0 they're rethinking that. Of course, Perl rethought that from the start.)"

"Just don't make the '9' format pack/unpack numbers..."

"I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read."

"To ordinary folks, conversion is not always automatic. It's something that may or may not require explicit assistance. See Billy Graham."

"Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',..). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity."

"It may be possible to get this condition from within Perl if a signal handler runs at just the wrong moment. Another point for Chip..."

"As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct."

"The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases."

"That should probably be written: no !@#$%^&*:@!semicolon"

"That gets us out of deciding how to spell Reg&#91;eE&#93;xp?|RE . . . Of course, then we have to decide what ref $re returns..."

"'Course, that doesn't work when 'a' contains parentheses."

"I was trying not to mention backtracking. Which, of course, means that yours is 'righter' than mine, in a theoretical sense."

"Not that I'm against sneaking some notions into people's heads upon occasion. (Or blasting them in outright.)"

"(To the extent that anyone but a Prolog programmer can understand \X totally. (And to the extent that a Prolog programmer can understand 'cut'.)"

"Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I *must* be right."

"You don't have to wait--you can have it in 5.004_54 or so."

"There's something to be said for returning the whole syntax tree."

"It's not really a rule--it's more like a trend."

"Double *sigh*. _04 is going onto thousands of CDs even as we speak, so to speak."

"The code also assumes that it's difficult to misspell 'a' or 'b'."

"Well, hey, let's just make everything into a closure, and then we'll have our general garbage collector, installed by 'use less memory'."

"People who understand context would be steamed to have someone else dictating how they can call it."

"For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words."

"Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine."

"The way these things go, there are probably 6 or 8 kludgey ways to do it, and a better way that involves rethinking something that hasn't been rethunk yet."

"Beauty? What's that?"

"I'm afraid my gut level reaction is basically, proceed is cute, but cute doesn't cut it in the emergency room."

"I suppose one could claim that an undocumented feature has no semantics. :-("

"Yes, we have consensus that we need 64 bit support."

": - cut in regexps I don't think we reached consensus on that. We're still backtracking..."

"Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map! Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations... Boss: And what's that 'goto' doing there?!? Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing 'getservbyport'... Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL."

"Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo"

"Hey, if pi == 3, and three == 0, does that make pi == 0?"

"(Never thought I'd be telling Malcolm and Ilya the same thing..."

"And other operators aren't so special syntactically, but weird in other ways, like 'scalar', and 'goto'."

"Portability should be the default."

"If this were Ada, I suppose we'd just constant fold 1/0 into die 'Illegal division by zero"

"Are you perchance running on a 64-bit machine?"

"Almost nothing in Perl serves a single purpose."

"There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin."

"Reserve your abuse for your true friends."

"Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list is starting to resemble a feature list. You must be human or something."

"It's hard to tune heavily tuned code."

"Perl will always provide the null."

"It's easy to solve the halting problem with a shotgun."

"Well, I think Perl should run faster than C."

"To Perl, or not to Perl, that is the kvetching."

"I suppose you could switch grammars once you've seen 'use strict subs'."

"Well, you know, Hubbard had a bunch of people sworn to commit suicide when he died. So of course he never officially died..."

"Even the White House has a press agent."

"That's a valid argument. I just don't think it's valid enough."

"Perl should remain fast and intuitive (to the extent that it is :-)"

"I would estimate that the number of programs it breaks in the world will be less than 10. As long as one of those 10 isn't CGI.pm, we're probably okay."

"Just put in another goto, and then it'll be readable."

"I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, 'What is that, swearing?"

"Y'know, there are other possibilities if we assume that filenames are UTF-8...yikes...wait, put down that meat cleaver! Aieeee!!!"

"print rand rand rand 1, '\n'; # interesting distribution"

": I could understand principles of Perl source in 2-3 days &#91;. . .&#93; Gee, it took me about eleven years."

"There's often more than one correct thing. There's often more than one right thing. There's often more than one obvious thing."

"I don't believe I've ever cuddled my elses."

"I've always maintained a cordial dislike for indent, because it's usually right."

"I'd make people say 'use Fork;' if I thought I could get away with it."

"The way I see it, if you declare something portable, you'll always be wrong, and if you declare it non-portable, you'll always be right."

"Perhaps you should compile your Perl with long doubles one of these megaseconds."

": Why Bible quotes exclusively? What happened to the Eastern religions?<BR> I'm still working on the Unicode mods."

"Maybe we should take a clue from FTP and put in an option like 'print hash marks on every 1024 iterations'."

"And besides, if Perl really takes off in the Windows space, I think the rest of us would just as soon have a double-agent within ActiveState."

"The court finds everyone to be in contempt (including himself :-), and orders everyone sentenced to five years hard labor. (Working on Perl, of course.)"

"I note that the Python folks still think they like JPython. I wonder how long that will last?"

"I view the JVM as just another architecture that Perl ought to be ported to. (That, and the Underwood typewriter...)"

"So please don't think I have a 'down' on the MVS people. I'm just pulling off their arms to beat other people over the head with."

"It's, uh, pseudo code. Yeah, that's the ticket... &#91;...&#93; And 'unicode' is pseudo code for $encoding."

": What do people think? What, do people think?"

"Well, sure, I explicitly mentioned 'vtables' last time I brought this up. But a single pointer is fairly paltry, as tables go."

"I dunno. Perhaps you should be happy that I have a policy of refraining from grumbling about handicapped operating systems."

"Perl did not get where it is by ignoring psychological factors."

"On the plus side, it's a lot easier in general to find /usr/include than cpp."

"Psychotics are consistently inconsistent. The essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent."

"That which hits the fan tends to get flung in all directions."

"If this were Ada, we'd simply doc it as 'erroneous'."

"So I'm thinking about ??, or !!, or //, or \\, or whatever. But I think I like ?? the best so far. Or the least worst."

"One operator is no big deal. That can be fixed in a jiffy."

"In Clintonese, that would be 'You are free to infer that I was saying that.'"

"Would you trust the linguistic intuitions of someone who has been studying Latin or Greek for three days?"

"But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)"

"My arthritic pinkies are already starting to ache just thinking about ||||=."

"Orthogonality for orthogonality's sake is not something I'm keen on."

"Must be a different Larry Wall. There are at least 137 of us in the U.S."

"Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry."

"That is a known bug in 5.00550. Either an upgrade or a downgrade will fix it."

"That being said, I think we should immediately deprecate any string concatenation that combines '19' with '99'."

"The Golden Gate wasn't our fault either, but we still put a bridge across it."

"It should be illegal to yell 'Y2K' in a crowded economy."

"One thing I do understand is that people get scared when I start thinking out loud."

": No comment, since this is still hovering (see Larry's reply). Flutter, flutter."

"We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types--in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor..."

"Accidental stacks considered harmful."

"I try not to confuse roles and traits in my own life. Being the Perl god is a role. Being a stubborn cuss is a trait."

"And in the limiting case where the optimizer is completely broken because it's not implemented yet, we get to work around that too. Optionally..."

"I think I'm happier with that. $rubyometer += 0.3 or so."

"double value; /* or your money back! */ short changed; /* so triple your money back! */"

"/* now make a new head in the exact same spot */"

"#define NULL 0 /* silly thing is, we don't even use this */"

"#define SIGILL 6 /* blech */"

"if (rsfp = mypopen('/bin/mail root','w')) { /* heh, heh */"

"/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */"

"break; /* don't do magic till later */"

"stab_val(stab)->str_nok = 1; /* what a wonderful hack! */"

"tmps_base = tmps_max; /* protect our mortal string */"

"pos += screamnext&#91;pos&#93; /* does this goof up anywhere? */"

"str->str_pok |= SP_FBM; /* deep magic */ s = (unsigned char*)(str->str_ptr); /* deeper magic */"

"echo 'Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice."

"echo 'Hmmm...you don't have Berkeley networking in libc.a...' echo 'but the Wollongong group seems to have hacked it in."

"echo 'ICK, NOTHING WORKED!!! You may have to diddle the includes.';;"

"echo $package has manual pages available in source form. echo 'However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you."

"echo 'Your stdio isn't very std.'"

"&#91;End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...&#93;"

"OOPS! You naughty creature! You didn't run Configure with sh! I will attempt to remedy the situation by running sh for you..."

"That means I'll have to use $ans to suppress newlines now. Life is ridiculous."

"There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit."

"You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars. You can't even think about them!"

"Your csh still thinks true is false. Write to your vendor today and tell them that next year Configure ought to 'rm /bin/csh' unless they fix their blasted shell."

"/* we have tried to make this normal case as abnormal as possible */"

"s = (char*)(long)retval; /* ouch */"

"signal(i, SIG_DFL); /* crunch, crunch, crunch */"

"if (instr(buf,sys_errlist&#91;errno&#93;)) /* you don't see this */"

"/* dbmrefcnt--; */ /* doesn't work, rats */"

"#else /* !STDSTDIO */ /* The big, slow, and stupid way */"

"/* This bit of chicanery makes a unary function followed by a parenthesis into a function with one argument, highest precedence. */"

"Be consistent."

"Does the same as the system call of that name. If you don't know what it does, don't worry about it."

"Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place."

"Help save the world!"

"If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument."

"In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency."

"Okay, that's definitely enough hype."

"Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one."

"Remember though that THERE IS NO GENERAL RULE FOR CONVERTING A LIST INTO A SCALAR."

"The autodecrement is not magical."

"The previous line contains the naughty word '$&'.\n if /(ibm|apple|awk)/; # :-)"

"When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi."

"People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You'd think that would also be obvious. Instead, we're taught to express ourselves."

"But I'm not here to talk about postmodernism. I tried to do that last spring, and afterwards I was thoroughly deconstructed by the deconstructionists for attempting to deconstruct deconstructionism. At least, that's the construction I put on their construction of it. I was talking about postmodern culture, and they thought I was talking about postmodern literature. Not at all the same thing!"

"And C was good at something I like to call manipulexity, that is the manipulation of complex things. While shell was good at something else which I call whipuptitude, the aptitude for whipping things up."

"So... Perhaps the Perl 6 slogan should be "All Your Paradigms Are Belong To Us". We'll get to that."

"I simultaneously believe that languages are wonderful and awful. You have to hold both of those. Ugly things can be beautiful. And beautiful can get ugly very fast. You know, take Lisp. You know, it's the most beautiful language in the world. At least up until Haskell came along. (laughter) But, you know, every program in Lisp is just ugly. I don't figure how that works."

"Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things."

"How do you type it? With your keyboard."

"If there's a particular problem that Perl is trying to solve, it's the basic fact that all programming languages suck. Sort of the concept of original sin, applied to programming languages."

"There are a lotta computer languages out there doing drugs."

"Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady..."

"I started out as a BASIC programmer. Some people would say that I'm permanently damaged. Some people are undoubtedly right... But I'm not going to apologize for that. All language designers have their occasional idiosyncracies. I'm just better at it than most."

"But you could do extreme programming. In fact, I had a college buddy I did pair programming with. We took a compiler writing class together and studied all that fancy stuff from the dragon book. Then of course the professor announced we would be implementing our own language, called PL/0. After thinking about it a while, we announced that we were going to do our project in BASIC. The professor looked at us like we were insane. Nobody else in the class was using BASIC. And you know what? Nobody else in the class finished their compiler either. We not only finished but added I/O extensions, and called it PL 0.5. That's rapid prototyping."

"Is LISP a candidate for a scripting language? While you can certainly write things rapidly in it, I cannot in good conscience call LISP a scripting language. By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals... And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them."

"As a linguist, I don't think of Ada as a big language. Now, English and Japanese, those are big languages. Ada is just a medium-sized language."

"The only reason I've managed to run this open source project, is that I have learned to delegate even the delegation to other people. (final words of the video)."

"[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby."

"...Then you start building things like the Berlin wall to keep people inside your community. In anthropological terms, that's tribalism. A tribal Perl programmer might say, "If you leave the Perl tribe to go and join the Python tribe, we will hunt you down, cook you, and eat you." Or if you join the Ruby tribe, you will explode. By and large, I am not in favor of tribalism. Except for my tribe, of course."

"The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris."

"The problem with being consistent is that there are lots of ways to be consistent, and they're all inconsistent with each other."

"There's really no way to fix this and still keep Perl pathologically eclectic."

"&hellip;I also discovered Larry's First Law of Language Redesign: Everyone wants the colon."

"Larry's 2nd Law of Language Redesign: Larry gets the colon."

"When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?"

"Jesse Vincent: My dog is Web 2.0. Prove me wrong. Larry: Does your dog have a long tail? Damian Conway: If you enjoyed these practices, find 245 more like this in this book. Larry: Does your dog have a long tail?"

"Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible."

"As for whether Perl 6 will replace Perl 5, yeah, probably, in about 40 years or so."

"We take pleasure in watching an athlete break a record, hearing a soprano in full flight, or reading a philosopher of depth and insight. Human accomplishment is the ultimate spectator sport. Apply as much historical analysis to it as we wish, and we’ll not unlock all its mysteries. The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant."

"[On the question "Is bird imitation valid in jazz?"] I don’t know if it's valid in jazz, [...] but I enjoy it. It somehow comes in as part of the development of what I'm doing. Sometimes I can't do it. At home [in California] I used to play, and the birds always used to whistle with me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds."

"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again."

"I would be unelectable. I'm an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won't accept."

"In private, you got what you got in public. He treated everyone the same. He was just a very warm man, and he worked hard to impress upon his children the value of kindness. He was biologically incapable of gossip. There was no smallness in him."

"If you are going to call yourself a Christian—and I don't—then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight— it has put them in greater danger."

"Limbaugh hasn't had a natural erection since the Nixon Administration; think he's compensating for something? Now, I wouldn't pick on him for any of this stuff, not his blubbiness, not his man-boobs, not his inability to have a natural erection -- none of that stuff -- to me, off limits until! until! -- Mr. Limbaugh, you turn that sort of gun on somebody else -- once you start doing that, you're fair game, fat boy. Absolutely, you jiggly pile of mess. You're just fair game, and you're going to get it, too. [Laughs] You'd better watch what you say, Limbaugh, because it can come back the other way."

"You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn't get much higher. Come on baby, light my fire — Come on baby, light my fire — Try to set the night on fire."

"I didn't plan on rock 'n' roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock 'n' roll with jazz, and I thought I could make money playing music. In rock 'n' roll you can realize anything that you can in jazz or anything. There's no limitation other than the beat. You have more freedom than you do in anything except jazz — which is dying — as far as making any money is concerned."

"In The Doors we have both musicians and poets, and both know of each other's art, so we can effect a synthesis. In the case of Tim Buckley or Dylan you have one man's ideas. Most groups today aren't groups. In a true group all the members create the arrangements among themselves."

"Are you saying it's too loud? It's got to be loud. You're supposed to feel it all over."

"I like playing music because it's a good living and I get satisfaction from it. But I can't feed my family with satisfaction."

"Lars would talk his way into their pants. Kirk had a babyface that was appealing to the girls. And Cliff; he had a big dick. Word got around about that, I guess."

"Dying, dying, someone told me just recently, dying is easy. Living is hard. for everyone."

"If I hadn't have had music in my life, it's quite possible I could be in here. Or nor even in here, be dead — and I'd much rather be alive."

"Everybody is born good and everybody has got the same size soul. We're here to connect with that."

"All the drinking and all the other junk that I was stuck in... It was so predictable. So boring. I wake up the next day - somewhere, in some bed, I don't know who this person is next to me... and I'm drunk, competely hung over and have a show to do. The result is the same... When life now is pretty... exciting. You don't know what's gonna happen."

"It had to be something real bad. I think he stole music online."

"Just try and downpick as much as he does and you'll quickly realize your puny skills stand no chance against James."

"It's 4:30 in the morning, it's always 4:30 in the morning."

"No shortcuts, with me as with life."

"Van Gogh writing his brother for paints Hemingway testing his shotgun Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine the impossibility of being human Shakespeare a plagiarist Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness the impossibility the impossibility Nietzsche gone totally mad the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly."

"I've never met another man I'd rather be."

"I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead: men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideals."

"If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence."

"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way."

"I was given the job of milking the cows, finally, and it got me up earlier than anybody. But it was kind of nice, pulling at those cows' tits (pg. 172)."

"Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities."

"The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them."

"It began as a mistake."

"But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes."

"I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes."

""MR. JONSTONE IS A FINE MAN!" "Don't be silly, he's an obvious sadist," I said. "How long have you been in the Post Office?" "Three weeks." "MR. JONSTONE HAS BEEN WITH THE POST OFFICE FOR 30 YEARS!" "What does that have to do with it?" "I said, MR. JONSTONE IS A FINE MAN!" I believe the poor fellow actually wanted to kill me. He and Jonstone must have slept together. "All right," I said, "Jonstone is a fine man. Forget the whole fucking thing." Then I walked out and took the next day off. Without pay, of course."

"I thought about taking a shower but I could see the headlines: MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. ...I found out later that mail for the church was delivered to the parish house around the corner. But now, of course, I knew where to... shower when I'm down and out."

"It was the poor part of town—small houses and courts with mailboxes full of spiders, mailboxes hanging by one nail, old women inside rolling cigarettes and chewing tobacco and humming to their canaries and watching you, an idiot lost in the rain."

"Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working."

"They wouldn't fire me. Even the salesmen liked me. They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn't say anything. That was their little game. It didn't interest me. I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing."

""Wouldn't you like to come in and have a cup of tea and dry off?" "Lady, don't you realize that we don't even have time to pull up our shorts?" "Pull up your shorts?" "YES, PULL UP OUR SHORTS!" I screamed at her and walked off into the wall of water."

"“WHAT'S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES . . . EVEN THE PURPLE STICKINPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!”"

"“Look, you're small-town. I've had over 50 jobs, maybe a hundred. I've never stayed anywhere long. What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office-romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. But even then, it is just an offhand pasttime, like bowling or t.v. or a New Year's Eve party. You've got to understand that it doesn't mean anything and then you won't get hurt. Do you understand what I mean?""

""Fay had a spot of blood on the left side of her mouth and I took a wet cloth and wiped it off. Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.”"

"I squeezed Fay’s hand, kissed her on the forehead. She closed her eyes and seemed to sleep then. She was not a young woman. Maybe she hadn’t saved the world but she had made a major improvement. Ring one up for Fay."

"I got into bed, opened the bottle, worked the pillow into a hard knot behind my back, took a deep breath, and sat in the dark looking out of the window. It was the first time I had been alone for five days. I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. I took a drink of wine."

"You have a very strange face," she said. "You're not really ugly." "Number four shipping clerk, working his way up." "Have you ever been in love?" "Love is for real people." "You sound real." "I dislike real people." "You dislike them?" "I hate them." We drank some more, not saying much. It continued to snow. Gertrude turned her head and stared into the crowd of people. Then she looked at me. "Isn't he handsome?" "Who?" "That soldier over there. He's sitting alone. He sits so straight. And he's got all his medals on." "Come on, let's get out of here."

"That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man. I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax."

"I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat."

"Baby," I said. "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."

""Someday," I told Jan, "when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they'll say, 'What happened to George?' And somebody will say, 'Well, I don't know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes."

"My ambition is handicapped by my laziness."

""I've given you my time. It's all I've got to give - it's all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour."... "my time so that you can live in your big house on the hill and have all the things that go with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this arrangement... I've been the loser."

"I had first learned that I was an idiot in the school yard. I was taunted and poked at and jeered, as were the other one or two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, who were beaten and chasen, was that I was sullen. When surrounded I was not terrified. They never attacked me but would finally turn on one of the others and beat them as I watched."

"People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be."

"It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?"

"The bus ran along a very narrow strip of cement that stood up out of the water with no guard-rail, no nothing; that's all there was to it. The bus driver leaned back and we roared along over this narrow cement strip surrounded by water and all the people in the bus, the twenty-five or forty or fifty-two people trusted him, but I never did. Sometimes it was a new driver, and I thought, how do they select these sons of bitches? There's deep water on both sides of us and with one error of judgement he'll kill us all. It was ridiculous. Suppose he had an argument with his wife that morning? Or cancer? Or visions of God? Bad teeth? Anything. He could do it. Dump us all. I knew that if I was driving that I would consider the possibility or desirability of drowning everybody. And sometimes, after just such considerations, possibility turns into reality. For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil. But none of the bus drivers ever dumped us. They were thinking instead of car payments, baseball scores, haircuts, vacations, enemas, family visits. There wasn't a real man in the whole shitload."

"Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass."

"I had lumps all over my body, dizzy spells, I was spitting blood, and I had gone there only to be given an appointment for three weeks later. Now like every American boy I had always been told: catch cancer early. Then you go down to catch it early and they make you wait three weeks for an appointment. That's the difference between what we're told and actuality."

"Janeway Smithson was a little, insane, grey-haired bantam rooster of a man. He loaded five or six of us in one cab, and we rolled down to the bed of the L.A. River. Now in those days the L.A. River was a fake - there was no water, just a wide, flat, dry cement runway. The bums lived down there by the hundreds in little cement alcoves under the bridges and overpasses. Some of them even had potted plants in front of their places. All they needed to live like kings was canned heat (Sterno) and what they picked out of the nearby garbage dump. They were tan and relaxed and most of them looked a hell of a lot healthier than the average Los Angeles business man. Those guys down there had no problems with women, income tax, landlords, burial expenses, dentists, time payments, car repairs, or with climbing into a voting booth and pulling the curtain closed."

"When I went to the Yellow Cab Company I passed the Cancer Building and I remembered that there were worse things than looking for a job you didn't want."

"I'm no preacher but I can tell you this-the lives that people lead are driving them crazy and their insanity comes out in the way they drive."

"There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything."

"Every man is a poet"

"I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers."

"Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool."

"People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel hate or love."

"Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience."

"Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman."

"Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you."

"I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care."

"Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice."

"All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was always controlling who got a chance and who didn’t."

"And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher."

"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go."

"Money is like sex. It seems much more important when you don't have any..."

"on the radio I heard the news of that day at least 6 times, I was well versed in world affairs. the remainder of the stations played a thin, sick music. the classical stations refused to come in clearly and when they did it was a stale repetition of standard and tiresome works. I turned the radio off. a strange whirling began in my head—it circled behind the forehead, clockwise... I began to wonder, is this what happens when one goes mad?"

"I was still proud of that moment back then when Jed handed me that pint and I drained a third of it with all the disciples watching. damn, there was no way it seemed we could ever lose but we did. and it took me 3 or 4 decades to move on just a little. and Jed, if you are still here tonight, (I forgot to tell you then) here's a thanks for that drink."

"there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. ...I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. ...he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die ...and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep,do you?"

"a woman can drop out of your life and forget you real fast. a woman can't go anywhere but UP after leaving you, honey."

"there were these people on the ground, they were reaching up their arms and trying to pull me down but they couldn't do it. I felt like pissing on them. they were so jealous. all they had to do was to work their way slowly up to it as I had done. such people think success grows on trees. you and I, we know better."

"Sometimes I felt that I didn’t even know who I was. All right, I’m Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, ‘Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!’ and I’d most likely answer, ‘Yeah, what is it?’ I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter?"

"Man was born to die. What did it mean? Hanging around and waiting. Waiting for the ‘A train.’ Waiting for a pair of big breasts on some August night in a Vegas hotel room. Waiting for the mouse to sing. Waiting for the snake to grow wings. Hanging around."

"Hell was what you made it."

"Sex was a trap, a snare. It was for animals."

"Something was always after a man. It never relented. No rest, ever."

"the words have come and gone, I sit ill. the phone rings, the cats sleep. Linda vacuums. I am waiting to live, waiting to die. I wish I could ring in some bravery. it's a lousy fix"

"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."

"LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me."

"... don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist. There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. The female loves to play man against man, and if she is in a position to do it there is not one who will not resist. The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal. and torture and damnation. Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell."

"I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions. More often than not Democratic Law works to the advantage of the few even though the many have voted; this, of course, is because the few have told them how to vote. I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age. If I want to kill myself I feel that should be my business. If I go out and hold up gas stations at night to pay for my supply it is because the law inflates a very cheap thing into an escalated war against my nerves and my soul."

"If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them."

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."

"I found out that Hollywood is more crooked, dumber, crueler, stupider than all the books I've read about it. They didn't go deeply enough into how it lacks art, and soul, and heart— how it's really a piece of crap. There are too many hands directing, there're too many fingers in the pot, and they're all kind of ignorant about what they're doing. They're greedy, and they're vicious. So you don't get much of a movie."

"I'm on my porch 'cause I lost my house key. Pick up my book I read Bukowski."

"I was re-reading Bukowski when I decided to try a short story."

"Post Office by Charles Bukowski is the book I refer to when I want to confront the narrative voice at its barest, most honest, most unflattering—and most winning."

"You are now at a crossroads. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. Then act upon it."

"I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret."

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

"People’s lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group. … Your life experience will never far exceed the expectations of your peers, because to stay connected to them there is an unconscious contract that says we’re going to be within this range of each other. Now, on the other hand, if for some reason your friends have a higher expectation for life than you do, just to stay on the team you’ve got to raise your standard. And that's the beauty of life."

"The quality of your life is the quality of your communication."

"To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others."

"There were two great orators of antiquity. One was Cicero, and the other Demosthenes. When Cicero was done speaking, people always gave him a standing ovation and cheered, "What a great speech!" When Demosthenes was done, people said, "Let us march," and they did. That's the difference between presentation and persuasion. I hope to be classified in the latter category."

"I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk. They are the models of excellence the rest of the world marvels about. Join this unique team of people known as the few who do versus the many who wish — result-oriented people who produce their life exactly as they desire it."

"A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided."

"Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives."

"Put the dwarf within you to sleep."

"All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it's costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future."

"I realized that we all need a word to anchor ourselves to the focus of Constant and Never-ending Improvement. When we create a word, we encode meaning and create a way of thinking. The words that we use consistently make up the fabric of how we think and even affect our decision making. As a result of this understanding, I created a simple mnemonic: CANI!™ (pronounced kuhn-EYE), which stands for Constant And Never-ending Improvement."

"Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human."

"It is when we ask for love less and begin giving it more that the basis of human love is revealed to us."

"A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love."

"As soon as the love relationship does not lead me to me, as soon as I in a love relationship do not lead another person to himself, this love, even if it seems to be the most secure and ecstatic attachment I have ever experienced, is not true love. For real love is dedicated to continual becoming."

"It's not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely."

"One does not fall "in" or "out" of love. One grows in love."

"This loving person is a person who abhors waste — waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever."

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

"We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position."

"We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death."

"To love oneself is to struggle to rediscover and maintain your uniqueness. It is understanding and appreciating the idea that you will be the only you to ever live upon this earth, that when you die so will all of your fantastic possibilities. It is the realization that even you are not totally aware of the wonders which lie dormant within yourself."

"Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lies man's only promise."

"Perfect love is rare indeed — for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain."

"Go around — listen to how many times a day you say, "I love" instead of, "I hate." Isn't it interesting that children, as they learn the process of language, always learn the word "no" years before they learn the word "yes"? Ask linguists where they hear it. Maybe if they heard more of "I love, I love, I love" they'd hear it sooner and more often."

"DON'T MISS LOVE. It's an incredible gift. I love to think that the day you're born, you're given the world as your birthday present. It frightens me to think that so few people even bother to open up the ribbon! Rip it open! Tear off the top! It's just full of love and magic and joy and wonder and pain and tears. All of the things that are your gift for being human."

"Who is the loving person? The loving person is the person who loves him or herself. I say this so often, and people say, "Oh yes, you're so right," but they don't do it! You will never be able to love anyone else until you love yourself. Even With your Fat Thighs!"

"The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you."

"When I wrote my book, LOVE, it was really funny, because my publisher said, "Oh, Leo, you're going to have to change the name because I'm sure that someone has used that name before." I said, "Why don't you send it in and see what happens?" So we sent it in and I got the "copyright" for LOVE! No one had ever thought of a book called simply Love. L-O-V-E. Such a good word. Such a limitless word. Such a limitless concept."

"Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life."

"I will love you no matter what. I will love you if you are stupid, if you slip and fall on your face, if you do the wrong thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human being——I will love you no matter."

"People are not here to meet your expectations."

"To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing."

"I have a lot of things in my classes that I call "voluntarily mandatory." One of the things that is voluntarily mandatory is that every student come to see me in my office at least once. I cannot teach bodies. I can only relate to people. And so I say, "Come in, and we will sit across from one another. I don't want to talk about the texts or the class. We can do that another time. I just want to know the last time you saw a unicorn and do you still believe in primeval forests. And when you come, I am going to touch you — and if that bothers you, take your tranquilizer." It is amazing how many are intimidated by someone who says, "I want to touch you." I was raised in a large Italian family, as most of you know, and everybody hugs everybody all the time. On holidays everyone gets together, and it takes forty-five minutes just to say hello and forty-five minutes to say goodbye. Babies, parents, dogs — everyody's got to be loved! And so I have never suffered that existential feeling of not being. If someone can hug you and not go through you, you are. Try it sometime."

"About two years ago a young lady came into my office, and I knew immediately something was wrong. Her eyes were kind of glazed, and her head was nodding, and I asked, "What's the matter" She replied, "Oh, Dr. Buscaglia, in order to get enough courage to come to see you, I had to drink a whole bottle of Ripple! And I think I am going to be sick!" Imagining... having to drink a bottle of Ripple to summon up the courage to come to see me. All I do is put my hands out and say, "Hi." I cover their hands with mine and lead them into my office, and I can see a look of panic on their faces, "What's he going to do to me?" I am not going to do anything to you! I just want you to know that I cry, too, and I feel, too, and I care, too, and I don't know everything, too, and therefore, we can start with a common frame of reference — human being to human being. If anybody tries to play the game of "follow the guru" with me, they will be lost, for they will learn that I am just as confused as they are. The difference may be that I know it. A Buddhist teacher once said to me, "Why do you keep moving? You are already there." And all of a sudden it occurred to me — my goodness, I am!"

"I started my Love Class as a result of the suicide of one of my most talented students. She showed no sign of her despair. Then one day she took her life. I had to ask, "What's the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?" So I started my Love Class. I taught it free of salary and tuition just so students could have a forum to consider the truly essential things. I really didn't "teach" the class. I facilitated it — helping the students to discover their own magic."

"We take love for granted. We assume we are all perfect lovers and all we need do is wait and our love will grow and blossom as readily as a flower in spring. Not so. Love doesn't grow unless we do. It takes patience, knowledge, experience, determination, and every positive trait we possess. In addition, love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us."

"We are all born with God-given, unique traits and skills. But, as with all possibilities they will remain unrealized unless they are developed, nurtured, and put into practice. You may have the "capacity" to love, but if left undeveloped, you will never gain the "ability.""

"A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully."

"I don't believe in unconditional love. In fact, I think it's unwise. My love has had a condition that if ever my love keeps you from you, from your growing, and realizing your personal potential, then I must step aside. No one has the right to stand in the way of another's joy, development, or unique perceptions."

"We live in a small world. Not a leaf falls that doesn't affect a myriad of things. When we reach out to someone in love and the effect is made — everyone, everything which comes in contact with the person we've effected is better for it. Of course, the converse is true, too."

"The essence of love is getting out of oneself and into others. When we care less about our feelings, our rights, our happiness, our security, etc., and begin to concern ourselves with the feelings, rights, happiness, and security of others, we will have found the true power of love."

"We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It's the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness."

"We are born for love, but it will die if not nurtured."

"You can't imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I've said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love."

"I have learned that love is the most powerful force available to us. When we have real love we have the strength to perform miracles."

"I'd like to be remembered for being a good, kind, loving, gentle man who attempted to live wisely, and who cared a lot."

"As a former soldier, what struck me is the absolutely heartless way that war was being pursued by the Americans, partly I think because of the race problem. The Vietnamese to us were not merely communists, they were nasty little yellow people without souls. It didn't matter how we blew them up or how we bombed them or how we burned their villages and so on. I was very struck by that. And one thing I was trying to do in The Great War and Modern Memory was to awaken a sort of civilian sympathy for the people who suffer on the ground in wartime, and that's really an act that I've been performing, oh, ever since 1945, I suppose."

"I was very interested in the Great War, as it was called then, because it was the initial twentieth-century shock to European culture. By the time we got to the Second World War, everybody was more or less used to Europe being badly treated and people being killed in multitudes. The Great War introduced those themes to Western culture, and therefore it was an immense intellectual and cultural and social shock. Robert Sherwood, who used to write speeches for Franklin D. Roosevelt, once noted that the cynicism about the Second War began before the firing of the first shot. By that time, we didn't need to be told by people like Remarque and Siegfried Sassoon how nasty war was. We knew that already, and we just had to pursue it in a sort of controlled despair. It didn't have the ironic shock value of the Great War. And I chose to write about Britain because America was in that war a very, very little time compared to the British — just a few months, actually. The British were in it for four years, and it virtually destroyed British society."

"I'm a pacifist about certain things. I'm a pacifist in the way I define national interest. I use this example frequently: If the Mexicans decided to cross the Texas border with firearms, I would be down there in a moment with a rifle and a whistle to direct the troops to repel them. If the United States is attacked, I will defend it. My problem is the United States' defending the interests of the Union Oil Company or the United Fruit Company. Those are not American interests. They're private-money interests, and that bothers me a great deal."

"One of my favorite quotes is from Hemingway, who said, "Never persuade yourself that war, no matter how necessary, is not a crime." … It is. Sometimes it's necessary, but it's always awful, and that's my point."

"[On war as ironic]: It's ironic because everybody believes that life is pleasurable, and they should. They have a right to believe that, especially if they're brought up under a Constitution that talks about the pursuit of happiness. To have public life shot through with that kind of optimism and complacency is the grounds for horrible, instructive irony when those generalities prove not true. War tends to prove them not true. War is about survival and it's about mass killing and it's about killing or being killed — that is, in the infantry — and it is extremely unpleasant. One realizes that a terrible mistake has been made somewhere, either by the optimistic eighteenth century or by mechanistic twentieth century. The two don't fit together somehow, and that creates, obviously, irony."

"After every war, there's an immense overhaul of language, which in the Western world has created really the cultural and artistic phenomenon of what we call modernism; that is, a paring down of everything to minimal size, including language and ideas of grandeur, and ideas of a possibility of the state making everybody happy, and things like that. That modernism is really a form of skepticism or minimalism. You cut out everything that has deceived you and throw it away, and that leaves you with things like the Eames chair and Picasso and numerous other outcrops of modernism."

"One thing one can't help noticing is the efficacy of religion before the nineteenth century at dealing with these problems and answering some of these unanswerable questions. By the time of the Great War, religion is practically dead. By the time of the Second World War, it's no help at all. The chaplains that were attached to the infantry that I was in practically never did spiritual work because they knew they'd be ridiculed. What they did was to apply bandages and surgical scissors, assisting the medics and calming people down psychologically. But everybody recognized that religion was no help whatever."

"Irony is a great help in helping to penetrate fraudulent language. In the Second War especially, the language became virtually identical with the language of advertising. It was seen through by the troops, who knew what the truth was. It helped to sustain civilian support for the war, which was its purpose, after all. … And euphemism has remained, of course. It's a large part of the tone of public discourse. … It's now practiced on so wide and so official a scale that it's grown out of all proportion to what it was in the war."

""Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." … They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality. As I say in this new book of mine, not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way. It's those things that you learn about yourself that you never forget. You learn that you have much wider dimensions than you had imagined before you had to fight a war. That's salutary. It's well to know exactly who you are so you can conduct the rest of your life properly."

"Most Americans, in their sweet innocence, think that class has to do with money. But a glance at Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley will indicate that it has very little to do with money. It has to do with taste and style, and it has to do with the development of those features by acts of character. That was one of my points: to try to separate class from mercantilism or commercialism."

"To those on both sides who suffered."

"A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?"

"That's right, The Mascara Snake. Fast and bulbous! Also, a tin teardrop!"

"Pena Her little head clinking Like a barrel of red velvet balls Full past noise Treats filled her eyes Turning them yellow like enamel coated tacks Soft like butter hard not to pour"

"You look dandy in the sky but you don’t scare me Cause I got you here in my eye In this lifetime you got my human gets me blues"

"I've written every drum bit I ever done, every note. I played the drums. I played the guitar. I played the piano. I wanted it exactly the way I wanted. Exactly. Any composer I would think would want it that way, and I don't deviate at all. Don't you think that somebody like Stravinsky, for instance, don't you think that it would have annoyed him if someone bent a note the wrong way?"

"[Beefheart] used to say, "You think you got a hard job, man? I gotta sing to that shit!""

"The gods of one age become the devils of the age to follow. The priests look forward to the age to come and see only the end of the world."

"It is the profoundest of cosmic ironies. The divine power, our true spiritual essence, does not achieve perfection until it hits the ‘rock’ bottom of the cosmos – the dense and crude earth. It remains imperfect until the moment of entombment for the simple reason that until that dark nadir is reached the experiential adventure of existence remains incomplete, and Self is not yet endowed with the entire spectrum of the light of consciousness – from spirit to matter – from the highest high to the lowest low."

"Religion exalts mystery as an unknowable secret that must be sealed in glass like the corpse of an enchanted princess and fearfully worshipped from afar. Initiation, on the other hand, requires direct participation and demands each of us to smash the casket and press mad lips to mystery, wooing her as a lover who will offer up her treasurers in a succession of sweet surrenders. This she will do, but only in exact ratio to our evolving ability and worthiness to receive them."

"Do I think I'm a holy man? Sometimes."

"It's all in your head — you just have no idea how big your head is."

"God and I will achieve Supreme Enlightenment at the same moment."

"If we can’t wake up to the fact that deep down inside we are good, then we deserve to remain asleep dreaming we are evil."

"In a world that’s gone hellishly mad we’ve always taken comfort in the fact that the faith of our fathers is the one thing that remains solid and unchanging. It occurs to very few of us that perhaps for the last 2,500 years the faith of our fathers has been one of the main reasons why our world has gone hellishly mad."

"Spirits are as real as the powers they personify."

"The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse”. There is no evidence that people want to use these things."

"The Noisiest buzz in the industry lately has been over the emerging use of cable TV systems to provide fast network data transmissions using a device called a cable modem. But the likelihood of this technology succeeding is zilch."

"The AmigaOS remains one of the great operating systems of the past 20 years, incorporating a small kernel and tremendous multitasking capabilities the likes of which have only recently been developed in OS/2 and Windows NT. The biggest difference is that the AmigaOS could operate fully and multitask in as little as 256K of address space. Even today, the OS is only about 1MB in size. And to this day, there is very little a memory-hogging CD-ROM-loading OS can do the Amiga can't. Tight code - there's nothing like it. I've had an Amiga for maybe a decade. It's the single most reliable piece of equipment I've ever owned. It's amazing! You can easily understand why so many fanatics are out there wondering why they are alone in their love of the thing. The Amiga continues to inspire a vibrant - albeit cultlike - not unlike which you have with Linux, the Unix clone."

"When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?"

"People are always looking for the be-all-end-all super perfect Linux. It will never happen until Microsoft does Linux. Oops. Did I say that?"

"The absolute deterioration of the wiki concept is just a matter of time. Once spam mechanisms are developed to eat into these systems, the caretakers will be too busy to stop the public-driven deterioration."

"There was always something about Creative Commons and its name that bugged me, too. The name sounds like a variation of the once-powerful Common Cause political-action committee. A ring of days gone by — nostalgia. All I see here is making the very easy and simple U.S. copyright laws more complex for no apparent reason, except maybe as a protest."

"If [Apple] is smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures. It should do that immediately before it's too late."

"The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I've seen and heard, this won't be it."

"I hate to use that term [iPad Killer] since the iPad is probably dead anyway."

"The Apple iPad is not going to be the company's next runaway best seller. Not if the industry can help it. … with the iPad, Apple may have irked its somewhat new partner Intel Corp. Intel gets spanked by nobody."

"Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs. In fact, he's about as thrilling as dental floss."

"[A]s for my prediction that [the iPhone] would be a bad idea for Apple to pursue, anything can still happen. Time is a cruel mistress."

"Nobody can deny that Apple is fashionable, and most iPhone users buy the newest so they can be fashionable. To do this right, Apple needs a new phone every quarter."

"I consider this situation to be dire for Apple. When the iPhone 5 arrives shortly, it will be crunch time for the company. ... It may be the last important iPhone."

"Within the decade, Microsoft should have a minimum of 300 stores. They should do as well as the Apple Stores … [Microsoft] is going to experiment with holiday pop-up shops this year in various cities. I predict they will be hugely successful."

"If Apple has a flaw, it's the inability of the company to crush competition using the kind of aggressive tactics that companies like Microsoft and Intel have always applied."

"[O]ver time, I have come to realize that I was right about the iPhone and the smartphone in general. It has become a plague on humanity and a general annoyance. The iWatch will be worse."

"If [Apple's upcoming watch] can't replace the iPhone completely it's a goner."

"One thing that always bothers me is the attention the iPhone camera gets. The latest will have image stabilization, advanced phase focus, 4K video, 60 fps video, 240 fps slo-mo, and all sorts of features. That said — these are still just pinhole cameras on steroids. The only good thing they do is allow citizens to take more and more videos of crimes."

"Unfortunately, the public is all gaga over the idea of replacing a card swipe with an NFC pass-over using a smartphone. Go ahead and believe that. But if you think it is also hacker-proof, you'll be in for a surprise. It's no safer than using the mattress to stash cash. At some point, you can expect to be robbed blind."

"The computer division of Apple will eventually become a genuine albatross around the company's neck. So it's better off as a standalone company focused on computers."

"Apple mentions the Mac less and less at its big events. The company knows that the machine is a drain on resources that detracts from its new core business ... Mac will be phased out and the whole line will be replaced by iPads."

"We have all the elements of being the worst band in the world: a bass player who’s got some slap-bass shit, heavy riff guitars, a DJ scratching on the songs, a crazy drummer, and a singer who’s in touch with his feminine side. Even our band name is the worst name ever: it evokes imagery of ‘Incubus’ in death-metal writing, with bullet belts across our chests."

"She is a girl so I wouldn’t slap her. I would lock her in a room full of spiders and let her think about what she’s doing to the youth of America."

"The girl I find who wants to talk about quantum theory in a bar is the one I want to marry."

"Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about."

"Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing-we're domesticated apes with a microphone."

"I learned from a very young age that if I pursued the things that truly excited me, that they would reward in more important ways, like happiness"

"We don't know much about him. We do know that he came from a sperm meeting an egg. Actually, his name is Charles Mulholland. We don't know what he does, but he sure looks like he knows something."

"She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence."

"When we're making music together, it's like five men making love-in a very platonic sense. It's very erotic, because your spirits are intermingling, you're becoming one. It's also why it can get so heated. You're tapping into this electricity that's very primal."

"Morning View is I think collectively probably our favorite record that we have made as a band because it was the most effortless... um... in its conception... you know? It was a lot less slaving over parts and trying to just get together in this big beautiful room with a view of the ocean and parts and sounds and melodies and lyrics would just happen... they would just sort of spill out of us without us really trying... so to me that's sort of the most amazing way to write music or do any kind of art, which is by letting it happen... but one of the most important parts in any sort of.. uh... journey so to speak.. Is uh... the ride... and we've had a really good time riding to where ever it is we are going... and I don't even think any of us know particularly where it is going to take us... But it's been really fun sort of chasing it."

"Jose just got a tattoo of an ass tattooed on his ass the other day. It's actually quite fascinating. Confusing, but fascinating. When you come to the show, ask him about it. He'll show you."

"If I forgot some stuff, please excuse me; I ate the brown acid at Woodstock '69 and can scarcely remember my own name."

"I was in a bookstore, browsing through an old Life magazine, when I saw a picture of what the article called spontaneous human combustion. There were an old guy's legs and shoes, perfectly intact...then, right around his knee area, was just a pile of charred ashes. I was going through some turmoil in my life, both good and bad, and the image struck a chord, so...I wrote a song about it."

"I attribute a scab to the present state of society. The way the scab looks in its worst state is gross and chaotic and horrible, that's now, but when it breaks away, there's a brand new piece of skin that's stronger than before. It's like creation out of chaos."

"Lyrically speaking, I know that there were a lot of things going on in and around the world and there were some very specific people in my mind coming dangerously close to having megolomaniacal tendancies and so I did my best to write those thoughts down.""

"I was on an airplane last year when a talk show began playing on the TVs. I decided to start narrating for the people, which is a really great game if you're ever bored enough. I realized a time will probably come when television will watch us if we're watching it, if that hasn't already happened, figuratively or literally. It sounded like some sort of pseudo-Big Brother nightmare, so I wrote it down."

"I think perhaps love thrives on unlikely circumstance and chance : life thrives on these principles, and is life not love? And love not life?"

"To think that one's actions could please the masses is indeed a notion bound in irony; someone will inevitably find something wrong in almost everything. So do what it is that you do best and remember to have enough tolerance for two."

"I need a new pair of shoes : I need a new shiny car : I need to buy until I fry : I can not name what I'm trying to : I want my cock an inch bigger : I want new, flawless tits : I'm not enough as I was made, please complete my partial mind : I want my money back, this product has a hole."

"In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity."

"Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink, Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides. Fuse the two - Kapow! What are you now? You're the human magic marker, won't you please surprise my eyes?"

"I'm sick of limiting myself to fit your definition."

"On the surface you hate, but you know you need me."

"You can't make me think like you, mundane."

"You act as if there's blinders on your eyes!"

"Can someone please explain to me your ever-present lack of speed?"

"I think I grew a grey watching you procrastinate!"

"You've been raised in limitation, but that glove never fit quite right."

"Too bad the things that make you mad are my favorite things."

"When we get there, We're going to fly so far away Making sure to laugh while we experience Anti-gravity."

"Society must let the artist go, to wander off into their nebula."

"Your tangerine of electricity is ripe and on a vine!"

"I'm born, I'm alive, I breathe, In a moment or two I realize, That the sphere upon which I reside Is asleep on its feet, Should I go back to sleep?"

"the day you were born, you were born free. That is your privilege."

"Maybe if I looked in my heart, I could find a back door."

"Will I ever get to where I'm going? If I do, will I know when I'm there? If the wind blew me in the right direction, Would I even care? I would."

"It seems as though I'm going nowhere really fucking fast."

"You think that you're on the brink? The shit hasn't even begun to hit the fan."

"Consequence, you'll see, will be stranger than a gang of drunken mimes."

"Don't let the world bring you down. Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold. Remember why you came, and while you're alive, Experience the warmth before you grow old."

"It feels like trading brains with an imbecile."

"Just when you thought it was safe to think, in comes mental piracy!"

"What I'm looking for cannot be sold to me."

"What I want, and what I need, is and will always be free."

"Meet me in outer space."

"If you let them make you, They'll make you paper mache. At a distance, you're strong, until the wind comes Then you crumble and blow away."

"If you really want to live, why not try and make yourself?"

"Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear."

"Lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel."

"When I drive myself, my light is found."

"Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there with open arms and open eyes."

"I'd sooner sleep by an open fire and wake up fried."

"I need a map of your head, translated into English, so I can learn to not make you frown."

"I've had all that I can take and exploding seems like a definite possibility to me."

"Pardon me while I burst into flames I've had enough of the world and its people's mindless games. So pardon me while I burn and rise above the flames. Pardon me, pardon me. I'll never be the same."

"I've been thinking of combustication as a welcome vacation from the burdens of planet Earth - like gravity, hypocrisy, the perils of being in 3-D, and thinking so much differently."

"To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does, will end up smelling. Knowing this, why do I defy? Because my inner voice is yelling. There is a fist pressing against Anyone who thinks something compelling. Our intuit we're taught to deny Yes, our soul, we're told's for selling."

"Get out from under precipice and see the sky."

"If you let them fuck you, there will be no foreplay."

"Perspective prys her once-weighty eyes and it gives you wings."

"I lean against the wind, pretend that I am weightless, and in this moment I am happy."

"The world's a rollercoaster, And I am not strapped in. Maybe I should hold with care, But my hands are busy in the air!"

"I am bottled, fizzy water, and you are shaking me up."

"Temporaryism has been the Black Plague and the Jesus of our age."

"Forgive my indecision. I am only a man."

"Seeing you is like pulling teeth, and hearing your voice is like chewing tin foil!"

"Kudos to those who see through sickness."

"I suggest we learn to love ourselves before it's made illegal."

"My biggest fear will be the rescue of me."

"On the back of every right, there's a wrong looming."

"I refuse to kneel before the sights you choose to see."

"If this is right, I'd rather be wrong. If this is sight, I'd rather be blind."

"I marvel at the stars, and feel my heart overflow."

"Floating down a river named Emotion...will I make it back to shore, or drift into the unknown?"

"If I met you in a scissor fight, I'd cut off both your wings on principle alone."

"All of us are heaven-sent, and there was never meant to be only one."

"Look. Find. Free."

"Even straight roads meander."

"Put down your hollow tips, And kiss your lover's lips, And know that fate is what we make of it."

"It's just another day in the life of apes with ego trips."

"You're so much more endearing with the sound turned off."

"The world is a drought when out of love."

"I have an open-door policy when it comes to blame."

"My secret arsenal is an infinite, ageless ink well. It's a fountain of youth and a patriot's weapon of choice."

"If you're looking for an open book - Look no further, I am yours."

"It pains me to believe that you have never stepped out of the skin you live with."

"This island isn't big enough for both of us...so who will swim in eel-infested oceans?"

"Price tags advertise your pride."

"Since when did what we paid for colored cloth gauge our gravity?"

"Insecurites are about as useful as trying to put the pin back in the grenade."

"This isn't coincidence. There's no such thing."

"This party is old and uninviting Participants all in black and white You enter in full-blown techincolor Nothing is the same after tonight."

"Your love is a verb here in my room."

"I wouldn't change a thing now that you're here."

"Some people fall in love and touch the sky. Some people fall in love and find quicksand."

"Bring your mouth and selective irreverence - We'll both see stars."

"Kill your doubt with the coldest of weapons: Confidence."

"If I turn into another, Dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me. Sing this song. Remind me that we'll always have each other When everything else is gone."

"Girl, it's time we met and made a mess."

"Wait, there is a light, there is a fire, illuminated attic. Fate or something better, I could care less,Just stay with me a while"

"To get their attention, start lobbing the light grenades (That burst and blind them with the truth! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!)"

"Have a heart and try me, cause without love I won't survive."

"I'm not an alarmist, but someone should break the glass, and pull that red T-Lever down!"

"Before you swim, you gotta be okay to sink."

"Just undo yourself and see a second sun ascend."

"Give it time, girl, the fire feels divine. The sweetest things, they burn before they shine."

"I'm keeping an eye on the future, an eye on the past, and the present in my pocket."

"Songs of liberation echo from the dust."

"You're about as reliable as paper shoes in bad weather."

"On a burning bridge, your options are minimal at best Depending on where you're standing And how much breath is in your chest If it came down to it Would you high-tail home and hide? Or dance on fire and enjoy the ride?"

"Life's a match in a gas tank. Don't ever mourn the ebbing tide."

"There's so much more to get than wronged."

"Earth to Bella - You're treading water successfully. But are you really? Don't you want to see the deep? It's not so hard. Just forgive yourself and feel the water open in."

"It never struck me as interesting that I didn't go to school — we had our own little world. I always thought of kids who were going to regular school as if they're the others, the separate ones."

"To search and seek among the outer bounds, And when we land upon a distant shore, To seek another yet farther still."

"The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."

"When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it."

"No-one can function properly without occasional peace and quiet."

"So tell me, is it true that men have ten toes, as is said?"

"Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now."

"Shall we dance, friend of my heart?"

"Applied properly, it [logic] can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience."

"Those whom we love are often the most alien to us."

"Characters are born from necessity."

"My father's work will not go unfinished, even if it takes me to the grave. That is what I want you, as a rider, to understand. All of Ajihad's plans, all his strategies and goals, they are mine now. I will not fail him by being weak. The empire will be brought down, Galbatorix will with dethroned, and the rightful government will be raised."

"It seems a cold world without something … more." "On the contrary," said Oromis, "it is a better world . A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won't tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else's notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will."

"Well, I suppose I won't see you for a while. So farewell, good luck, avoid roasted cabbage, don't eat ear wax, and look on the bright side of life!"

"You must learn to see what you are looking at."

"‘You cheated.’ ‘No, I exploited a weakness in my opponent. There is a difference.’"

"‘I don’t know how else to teach you what you need to learn except by showing you your mistakes over and over again until you stop making them.’"

"‘It’s impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.’"

"Death, he had come to believe, was a corrosive thing, and the more he was around it, the more it gnawed away at who he was."

"‘You of all people should know that everything in this world must be paid for, whether in gold, time, or blood.’"

"“I am the victor. In the end nothing else matters.’"

"‘I cannot forgive, but I understand.’"

"‘I am not who I was, but I know who I am.’"

"‘Then I guess we have no choice but to go forward. When have we ever had any choice but to go forward?’"

"Better to die than to live in fear."

"War was a catalog of madness."

"Change is neither good nor bad, but knowledge is always useful."

"‘I am not ready. But when will we ever be ready?’"

"‘Fight if you wish. Deny what is before you if it comforts you. But nothing you do can change your fate.’"

"‘When you teach them—teach them not to fear. Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant, pounding companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what is right.’"

"Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen."

"Many things are possible. Few things are certain."

"I see people who write characters who are loonies and make them convincing and believable, and I envy them tremendously. I don’t really understand them. It’s funny, because I’ve created my own monster. In the ‘Great War’ and ‘American Empire’ books, I’m writing the person who is the functional equivalent of Adolf Hitler. I’m inside his head — and that’s a very strange place for somebody who thinks of himself as a fairly rational fellow to be. That’s alarming."

"I suspect S.F. has an individualistic, antiauthoritarian trend to it not least because so many of the people who read and write it (not all by any means, but quite a few) are innerdirected introverts who make neither good leaders nor good followers. Am I talking about myself? Well, now that you mention it, yes. But I ain’t the only one, not even close."

"Some people blame the devil to keep from owning up to their shortcomings."

"Whether the bear beats the lion or the lion the bear, the rabbit always loses."

"[Dr.] Riario’s laugh was harsh. “I hate smallpox, and even more I hate being helpless against it. If it’s God’s curse as they say, why, I curse God back for it.”"

"“Why?” he cried, a groan that filled the room. “Ask God when you come before Him in judgment,” Riario said. “I intend to. He’d best have a good answer, too, or I’ll make Him pay. One day I had a wife I loved, two daughters I couldn’t afford to dowry, and a face I didn’t mind seeing in a mirror. A couple of weeks later…"

"Research seemed a more profitable way to spend his time than mourning."

"I am not especially wise, but I am especially stubborn."

"As riots have a way of doing, this one was rapidly outgrowing the incident that had spawned it."

"“The Holy Spirit will guide the assembled fathers to the truth,” the magistrianos said confidently. Being a veteran of years of bureaucratic infighting, he added, “Of course, we may have to help things along a bit.”"

"Beauty was too rare in the world to be wasted."

"His eyes were black and shiny; he had somehow the air of a man who saw things no one else did. Whether those things were actually there, Argyros was not sure."

"There was, he remembered, far more to love than what went on in bed, but that had its place too."

"“Mobs,” Corippus said scornfully. “The bravest bastards in the world, till somebody fights back.”"

"He’s had less use for me outside the bedchamber since I stopped telling him things he wanted to hear."

"Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia."

"Keeping the Army of Northern Virginia fed and clothed was a never-ending struggle. His men were making their own shoes now, when they could get the leather, which as not often. The ration was down to three-quarters of a pound of meat a day, along with a little salt, sugar, coffee- or rather, chicory and burnt grain- and lard. Bread, rice, corn... they trickled up the Virginia Central and Orange and Alexandria Railroad every so often, but not nearly often enough. He would have to cut the daily allowance again, if more did not arrive soon. President Davis, however, was as aware of all that as Lee could make him. To hash it over once more would only seem like carping."

"A gun cracked, quite close to the tent. Soldier's instinct pulled Lee's head up. Then he smiled and laughed to himself. One of his staff officers, most likely, shooting at a possum or squirrel. He hoped the young man had scored a hit. But no sooner had the smile appeared than it vanished. The report of the gun sounded- odd. It had been an abrupt bark, not a pistol shot or the deeper boom of an Enfield rifle musket. Maybe it was a captured Federal weapon. The gun cracked again and again and again. Each report came closer to the one than two heartbeats were to each other. A Federal weapon indeed, Lee thought: one of those fancy repeaters their cavalry like so well. The fusillade went on and on. He frowned at the waste of precious cartridges- no Southern armory could easily duplicate them. He frowned once more, this time in puzzlement, when silence fell. He had automatically kept track of the number of rounds fired. No Northern rifle he knew was a thirty-shooter. He turned his mind back to the letter to President Davis. -Valley, he wrote. Then gunfire rang out again, an unbelievably rapid stutter of shots, altogether too quick to count and altogether unlike anything he had ever heard. He took off his glasses and set down the pen. Then he put on a hat and got up to see what was going on."

"Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond January 17, 1864 General Lee: I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina, who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your acquaintance & as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him & his remarkable weapon for yourself. I remain, Your most ob't servant, Josiah Gorgas Colonel"

"Walter Taylor asked, "Mr. Rhoodie, what do you call this rifle of yours? Is it a Rhoodie, too? Most inventors name their products for themselves, do they not?" "No, it's not a Rhoodie." The big stranger unslung the rifle, held it in both hands as gently as if it were a baby. "Give it its proper name, Major. It's an AK-47.""

"Lang kept at it until everyone had had a turn shooting an AK-47. Then he said, "This weapon can do one other thing I haven't shown you yet. When you move the change lever all the way down instead of to the middle position, this is what happens." He stuck a fresh clip in the repeater, turned toward the target circle, and blasted away. He went through the whole magazine almost before Caudell could draw in a startled breath. "Good God almighty," Rufus Daniel said, peering in awe at the brass cartridge cases scattered around Lang's feet. "Why didn't he show us that in the first place?" He was not the only one to raise the question; quite a few shouted it. Caudell kept quiet. By now, he was willing to assume Lang knew what he was doing. The weapons instructor stayed perfectly possessed. He said, "I didn't show you that earlier because it wastes ammunition and because the weapon accurate past a few meters- yards- on full automatic. You can only carry so many rounds. If you shoot them all off in the first five minutes of battle, what will you do once they're gone? Think hard on that, gentlemen, and drill it into your private soldiers. This weapon requires fire discipline- requires it, I say again.""

""It is an evil, sir, an unmitigated evil," Lincoln said. "I shall never forget the group of chained Negroes I saw going down the river to be sold close to a quarter of a century ago. Never was there so much misery, all in one place. If your secession triumphs, the South will be a pariah among nations." "We shall be recognized as what we are, a nation among nations," Lee returned. "And, let me repeat, my being here is a sign secession has triumphed. What I would seek to do now, subject to the ratification of my superiors, is suggest terms to halt the war between the United States and Confederate States." Lincoln refused to call Lee's country by its proper name. As a small measure of revenge, Lee put extra weight on that name. Lincoln sighed. This was the moment he had tried to evade, but there was no evading it, not with the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in his parlor. "Name your terms, General," he said in a voice full of ashes."

"The crowd of ragged Confederates on the White House lawn had doubled and more since he went in to confer with Lincoln. The trees were full of men who had climbed up so they could see over their comrades. Off in the distance, cannon occasionally still thundered; rifles popped like firecrackers. Lee quietly said to Lincoln, "Will you send out your sentries under flag of truce to bring word of the armistice to those Federal positions still firing upon my men?" "I'll see to it," Lincoln promised. He pointed to the soldiers in gray, who had quieted expectantly when Lee came out. "Looks like you've given me sentries enough, even if their coats are the wrong color." Few men could have joked so with their cause in ruins around them. Respecting the Federal President for his composure, Lee raised his voice: "Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, after three years of arduous service, we have achieved that for which we took up arms-" He got no further. With one voice, the men before him screamed out their joy and relief. The unending waves of noise beat at him like a surf from a stormy sea. Battered forage caps and slouch hats flew through the air. Soldiers jumped up and down, pounded on one another's shoulders, danced in clumsy rings, kissed each other's bearded, filthy faces. Lee felt his own eyes grow moist. At last the magnitude of what he had won began to sink in."

"With these victories to which you refer, the Confederate States do seem to have retrieved their falling fortunes," Lord Lyons said. "I have no reason to doubt that Her Majesty's government will soon recognize that fact." "Thank you, your excellency," Lee said quietly. Even had Lincoln refused to give up the war- not impossible, with the Mississippi valley and many coastal pockets held by virtue of Northern naval power and hence relatively secure from rebel AK-47s- recognition by the greatest empire on earth would have assured Confederate independence. Lord Lyons held up a hand. "Many among our upper classes will be glad enough to welcome you to the family of nations, both as a result of your successful fight for self-government and because you have given a black eye to the often vulgar democracy of the United States. Others, however, will judge your republic a sham, with its freedom for white men based upon Negro slavery, a notion loathsome to the civilized world. I should be less than candid if I failed to number myself among that latter group." "Slavery was not the reason the Southern states chose to leave the Union," Lee said. He was aware he sounded uncomfortable, but went on, "We sought only to enjoy the sovereignty guaranteed us under the constitution, a right the North wrongly denied us. Our watchword all along has been, we wish but to be left alone."

""And what sort of country shall you build upon that watchword, General?" Lord Lyons asked. "You cannot be left entirely alone; you are become, as I said, a member of the family of nations. Further, this war has been hard on you. Much of your land has been ravaged or overrun, and in those places where the Federal army has been, slavery lies dying. Shall you restore it there at the point of a bayonet? Gladstone said October before last, perhaps a bit prematurely, that your Jefferson Davis had made an army, the beginnings of a navy, and, more important than either, a nation. You Southerners may have made the Confederacy into a nation, General Lee, but what sort of nation shall it be?" Lee did not answer for most of a minute. This pudgy little man in his comfortable chair had put into a nutshell his own worries and fears. He'd had scant time to dwell on them, not with the war always uppermost in his thoughts. But the war had not invalidated any of the British minister's questions- some of which Lincoln had also asked- only put off the time at which they would have to be answered. Now that time drew near. Now that the Confederacy was a nation, what sort of nation would it be? At last he said, "Your excellency, at this precise instant I cannot fully answer you, save to say that, whatever sort of nation we become, it shall be one of our own choosing." It was a good answer. Lord Lyons nodded, as if in thoughtful approval. Then Lee remembered the Rivington men. They too had their ideas on what the Confederate States of America should become."

"The Federal commissioners sat down across the mahogany table from their Southern hosts. After a couple of minutes of chitchat meant to be polite- but during which the three Confederates managed to avoid speaking directly to Butler- Seward said, "Gentlemen, shall we attempt to repair the unpleasantness that lies between our two governments?" "Had you acknowledged from the outset that this land contained to governments, sir, all the unpleasantness, as you call it, would have been avoided," Alexander Stephens pointed out. Like his body, his voice was light and thin. "That may be true, but it's moot now," Stanton said. "Let's deal with the situation as we have it, shall we? Otherwise useless recriminations will take up all our time and lead us nowhere. It was, if I may say so, useless recriminations on both sides that led to the breach between North and South.""

"Judah Benjamin said, "The nations of Europe continue to abhor our policy, try as we will to convince them that we cannot do otherwise. Mr. Mason has written from London that Her Majesty's government might well have been willing to extend us recognition two years ago, were it not for the continuation of slavery among us: so Lord Russell has assured him, at any rate. Mr. Thouvenel, the French foreign minister, has expressed similar sentiments to Mr. Slidell in Paris." Slavery, Lee thought. In the end, the world's outside view of the Confederate States of America was colored almost exclusively by its response to the South's peculiar institution. Never mind that the U.S. Constitution was a revocable compact between independent states, never mind that the North had consistently used its numerical majority to force through Congress tariffs that worked only to ruin the South. So long as black men were bought and sold, all the high ideals of the Confederacy would be ignored."

"President Davis said, "The 'free' factory worker in Manchester or Paris- yes, in Boston as well- is free only to starve. As Mr. Hammond from South Carolina put it so pungently in the chambers of the U.S. Senate a few years ago, every society rests upon a mudsill of brute labor, from which the edifice of civilization arises. We are but more open and honest about the nature of our mudsill than other nations, which gladly exploit a worker's labor but, when he can no longer provide it, cast him aside like a used sheet of foolscap.""

"Lee wondered how Jefferson Davis had ever managed to inveigle him into accepting the Confederate Presidency. Even without counting the armed guards who surrounded the presidential residence on Shockoe Hill, he found himself a prisoner of his position. To do everything that needed doing, he should have been born triplets. The one of him available was not nearly enough; whenever he did anything, he felt guilty because he was neglecting something else."

"But there is no such thing as possessing a little freedom," Lee mused. "Once one enjoys any whatsoever, he will seek it all."

"Getting men to give officers the respect their rank deserved was a battle the army hadn’t won yet and wouldn’t anytime soon."

"A low murmur came from his audience, more frightening in its way than the fury they had shown before. Fury didn’t last. Now Lincoln was making them think. Thought was slower than anger to flower into action, but it was a hardy perennial. It did not bloom and die."

"He’d turned fifty-seven earlier in the year, and the past had a way of looking better and the present worse the older he got."

"When a politician, which was what the president of the CSA had long since become, said he was personally in sympathy with something, Jackson had learned, he meant the opposite."

"“How many Mormons are polygamists, truly?” Lincoln asked. “They write all sorts of things in the eastern papers.” “They say all sorts of things here, too,” Hamilton answered. “The truth is devilish hard to find, and they don’t keep any public records of marriages past the first, which makes it harder yet. I’d say it’s about one in ten, if that, but the polygamists have influence beyond their numbers. If you’re going to support more than one wife and family, you need more than the common run of money, you see.” “Oh, yes,” Lincoln said. “A case similar to that of slaveholders in the Confederate States.”"

"He realized, belatedly, that he had been less than diplomatic. That did not bother him, either: he was less than diplomatic."

"No one argued with him, which was a pleasant novelty."

"Like South Carolina, Utah is too large to be an insane asylum and too small to make a nation, and, unlike South Carolina, lacks other nearby states full of zanies to join her in her madness."

"But, at the moment, the urge to write was not upon him. He shook his head and grimaced wryly. As a veteran newspaper man, he knew you wrote when you had to write, not when the Muse sprinkled fairy dust in your hair and tapped you with a magic wand."

"“So you’re one of the ones who still say ‘if there be,’ are you, Three-Card? I know the fancy grammarians like it better, but ‘if there are’ has always been good enough for me.” “I’m an old man.” Jesperson ran a pudgy finger along the gray walrus mustache he wore. “The things the modern generation does to the English language are a shame and a disgrace, nothing less.”"

"War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Its glory is all moonshine."

"Custer paused and sent Tom a quizzical look. “‘Scoops’? What’s a scoop?” “A Mormon. Heard it the other day,” his brother answered. After removing his hat, Tom mimed removing the top of his skull in the same way and scooping out a large portion of its contents. “Have to have most of your brain missing to buy what they’re selling, don’t you think?” “Mm, you’re likely right.”"

"The Mormons habitually dissembled about their plural marriages."

"“I see that this photograph shows me you have been imperfectly truthful here,” he told them, having been too well brought up to call a woman a liar to her face."

"“So this is the famous George Cannon of whom you telegraphed me, is it? He doesn’t look so much like a wild-eyed fanatic as some of the ones we snared before.” “No, sir,” Custer agreed: close enough for his superiors to hear him, he made a point of agreeing with them. “But without their coldhearted, coolheaded comrades egging them on, the wild-eyed fanatics could not do so much damage.”"

"He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead."

"Blaine hated the Confederate States because they were a rival, not because they were tyrants. Had they been exemplars of purest democracy, rivals they would have remained, and he would have hated them no less."

"He knew what he imagined and what was real were not one and the same. Knowing it and coming to terms with it were not one and the same, either."

"Then he laughed at himself. If Fort Benton counted for civilization, he’d been out in the wilderness too long."

"“Oh, they are great ones for taking a high moral tone, the Confederate States,” Douglass said. “Taking a high moral tone costs them nothing. Living up to it is something else again.”"

"War was rapidly doing what war did—making ugly everything it touched."

"“You wouldn’t bring me fifty dollars. You’re too damn old and too damn uppity.” “I can’t help being old, and I am proud to be uppity,” Douglass said."

"Every so often, though, the passing years up and ambushed him. They had more skill at it than any Yankees. One day, they would shoot him down from ambush, too."

"“What’s the war news?” “They’re killing people,” Sam said, and let it go at that."

"“Why do we have such a pack of confounded dunderheads running this country?” “My theory used to be that we get the government we deserve,” Sam said. “Bad as we are, though, I don’t think we’re that bad. Right now, I’m taking a long look at the notion that God hates us.”"

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some, the word means for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and with the product of his labor. With others, the same word means for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. The fullness of time, I am convinced, will prove to the world which is the true definition of the word, and my earnest hope remains that the United States of America show yet lead the way in the proving."

"The worst revolutionaries today are those reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need for change."

"An army that was winning had little backbiting. When things went wrong, everyone was at pains to prove the misfortune could not possibly have been his fault."

"Apart from the Volunteer companies, a lot of men in San Francisco carried guns for self-protection—not least, for protection from other men carrying guns."

"Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh."

"We must deal with life as it is, not with life as we wish it were or as it may be ten years or fifty years from now."

"“Give me two synonyms for ‘idiots,’” Clemens said, and then gave them himself: “‘Fools’ and ‘Republicans.’”"

"“You done opened my eyes, and I reckon I can go and open some other folks’ eyes my own self. You got yourself a—what’s the Bible word?—A disciple, that’s what it is.” “Good luck to you, Mr. Blackford,” Lincoln said. “Be the truth’s disciple, not mine. Follow the truth, wherever it may lead you.”"

"Impasse. Stuart hated impasses. He hated ambiguity of any kind. The older he got, the more ambiguity he saw in the world. He hated that, too."

"When was the last time you heard a Republican speak up for a fair shake for the working man or for justice and equality for all men? Those are the ideals we espoused when we were young. Have they changed from boons to evils as we grew old?"

"Courage and the goodness of one’s cause, unfortunately, do not always go hand in hand."

"Longstreet, as far as Jackson was concerned, made a better politician than a soldier; he was full of the deviousness politics required."

"Anxious, he asked, “My dear, how are you?” “As the good Lord meant me to be,” she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, “Pretty soon I’ll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world.” “Good,” Douglass said. “I’m sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him.”"

"“You’re a Democrat, aren’t you general?” somebody asked. “What sensible man isn’t?” Custer returned."

"“Won’t it be fine, getting to spend Christmas somewhere near the edge of civilization?” “Yes, sir,” his aide-de-camp agreed enthusiastically. “If El Paso isn’t civilization, at least it’s on the railroad line to it.”"

"But, aside from that grumbling, without which they would hardly have been soldiers, they went where they were ordered."

"Radicals hire bomb-throwing maniacs. Rich men hire lawyers. They’re more expensive, but they ought to be, because they do more damage."

"An idea may be a good one no matter who propounds it."

"“You notice he does not do anything about it. The first amendment to the Constitution protects our right to speak freely.” He let out a chuckle the wind flung away. “The first amendment also protects his right to speak freely, however distasteful I find his opinion.”"

"The ability to see what is, sir, is essential for the leader of a great nation."

"He was a pretty fair officer, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Of course, when you got right down to it, who was?"

"“Putting the best face on things doesn’t make them right,” Flora said with a stern rectitude of a temperance crusader smashing a bottle of whiskey against a saloon wall."

"Whenever you throw away what’s right for what’s convenient, you end up losing both."

"What should matter and what does matter, monsieur, are not one and the same thing, I regret to say."

"“What is the younger generation coming to?” she exclaimed: the cry of the older generation throughout recorded history."

"At sixteen, you knew you could do the impossible. At forty-three, you knew damn well you couldn’t."

"He’d always been glad he wasn’t an infantryman: if you were a mudfoot, war, and the death and the maiming that went with war, were random and impersonal. What had he just been doing but dealing out random, impersonal death? He thought of himself as a knight in shining armor. What sorts of filthy things had knights done that never got into the pages of Malory and Ivanhoe? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out, not really. He looked down at himself. His imaginary suit of armor seemed to have a patch or two of rust on it. No matter who you were or what you did, you couldn’t stay immaculate, not in this war."

"That was something else war was about: not caring."

"If you started thinking the whole world was like the part of it where you lived, you were going to be wrong a lot of the time."

"The countryside looked as if hell had been there, but had gone away on vacation."

"War would have been a much simpler, easier business with politics out of the mix."

"Being sure wasn’t the same thing as being right."

"Scott said, “If things had gone the way they were supposed to, we’d have been in Philadelphia a long time ago.” “Yeah, and if pigs had wings, we’d all carry umbrellas,” Featherstone replied with a snort “When you’ve been through even a little more fighting, kid, you’re going to see that things just don’t go the way they’re supposed to.”"

"Isaac might have been emboldened by the whiskey, for he asked Yossel Reisen, “What—is it like at the front?” Emboldened or not, he sounded hesitant. Yossel looked into the depths of his glass as he had looked through Flora. At last, he answered, “Think of all the worst things you know in the world. Think of them all in one place. Think of them as ten times as bad as they really are. Then think of them ten times worse than that. What you are thinking about when you do that is one ten-thousandth of what the front is like.” Nobody asked him any more questions."

"“How come they get to call us names whenever they please and we don’t get to call them names whenever we please? That’s not fair.” “Because they have more guns than we do, and they drove our soldiers out of this part of the country,” he told her. “If you have more guns in a war, you get to say what’s fair.”"

"Know what you’re doing and you’ll never need to cheat."

"Shouldering the bag, Moss made for the canvas tents that housed his new squadron. Such arrangements were all very well now, with the weather warm, but could you live in a tent in the middle of winter? Maybe the war would be over and he wouldn’t have to find out. He clicked tongue between teeth. He believed nonsense like that the year before. He was a tougher sell now."

"The Book of Mormon is no more the word of God than is an advertising circular for stomach powders."

"The paper was shipped up from the USA, and full of lies; since the demise of the Rosenfeld Register (which had been only half full of lies), no local paper had been permitted. But even lies could be interesting if they were new lies: why else did people read so many books and magazines?"

"Nobody was supposed to shoot at people wearing Red Cross armbands, but bullets, as he’d learned too well, weren’t fussy about whom they hit."

"He’d learned to strip and clean and reassemble the machine gun till he could do it with his eyes closed. It was an elegantly simple means of killing large numbers of men in a hurry, assuming that was what you wanted to do."

"When war reached out its hand, what did wealth and power matter? A fool with a gun could take them away. A fool with a gun had just taken them away."

"“How am I supposed to surprise you, Lucius?” He spread his hands and shrugged. “As long as we’ve been married, and you still expect to surprise me? You make me happy. That is enough, and more than enough. What do I need of surprises?”"

"The lad was at an age where he was inclined to believe things would turn out as he wanted for no better reason than that he wanted them to turn out so."

"When you were fifteen, you knew everything always turned out fine in the end. Arthur McGregor was a good deal past twice fifteen. He knew how foolish you were at that age."

"“We’d never—” Alexander began, but he didn’t finish the sentence. When you were in a war, who could say what you might be driven to do?"

"He truly did not seem to realize that terrorizing everyone who was not ardently on his side to begin with would ensure that he drew few new supporters."

"But destroying white privilege only boosted white fear."

"When Cassius was optimistic about the way the fighting was going, he was often wrong; when he was pessimistic, he was always right."

"Any time you could split the difference between what you really wanted and what you would settle for, you weren’t doing too bad."

"No, he hadn’t a clue. She studied him—perfect coif, perfect clothes, perfect confidence. Inside, where it didn’t show, she smiled a hunter’s smile. Perfect target."

"Something does stink down in Richmond. If we try to root it out now, we are liable to lose the war in the confusion that would follow. But if we don’t try to root it out, we are liable to lose the war from the confusion it causes."

"The newspapers extolled every skirmish as one Bonaparte would have admired (clumsy propaganda, in a province that had never reconciled itself to the French revolution), but anyone who believed all the newspapers said deserved nothing better than he got."

"“Life is hard.” Rodriguez shrugged. “And after life is done, then you die.” He shrugged again. “What can anyone do?” It was a good question. It was, when Pinkard thought about it, a very good question. If there were any better questions out there, he had no idea what they might be. “You do the best you can, is all,” he answered slowly, and then looked around at the hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere he was currently inhabiting. “If this here is the best I can do, I been doin’ somethin’ wrong up till now.”"

"“What’s obvious,” Morrell observed, “isn’t always true.”"

"Anytime a politician said he wouldn’t beat around the bush, you were well advised to keep your hand on your wallet."

"Anyone who forces something on someone and then says he will be better for it—you will, I hope, understand me when I say this is difficult to appreciate."

"They’d kill him or he’d kill them. War reduced everything to a brutal simplicity."

"Whites are so mystified, they put race ahead of class."

"“It’s not the way it was any more,” he said, half to himself. “Nothing is the way it was anymore.”"

"Martin was convinced the military police attracted self-righteous sons of bitches the way spilled sugar drew ants."

"Fashion made a harsh mistress."

"The War Department had never forgiven Jake for being right."

"“Major Potter isn’t a pal—not exactly, anyhow.” As far as he could see, the only thing he and the bespectacled major had in common was an unbounded contempt for the bluebloods who, because of who their grandfathers had been, got a higher rank and a bigger arena in which to display their blunders than they deserved."

"“The War Department has all sorts of opinions,” he said, sneering as he had when Dowling announced the Roosevelt was there. “A few of them bear a discernible relation to the real world—but only a few, mind you.”"

"You have a fine stump speech there, Congresswoman, and I think you are sincere in it, but it doesn’t altogether match the way the world works."

"When you lose, Sis, the last war’s never over and done with."

"A fisherman who wasn’t a born pessimist hadn’t been going to sea long enough."

"Moss sighed and nodded. Might-have-beens was a stupid game, when you got right down to it. Look back on things, and you couldn’t help but see they’d come out the way they had to come out."

"The bullet doesn’t care who shot it, only where it’s going."

"He sees the country going forward. He doesn’t see the suffering he’s creating to make it go in the direction he wants."

"She was only eight years old, and still confused the way things should have been with the way they were."

"Lieutenant Crowder reported that submersible as probably destroyed, and if you don’t think Lieutenant Crowder knows everything in the world, well, shit, just ask him."

"Some of those men were black, the new units going forward along with the white troops who have been in the field for years. The Negro soldiers charged straight at the U.S. trenches; they weren’t skilled in the fire-and-move tactics the veterans had learned by painful experience. And they went down in gruesome numbers. When they screamed, Bartlett couldn’t tell their voices from those of white men."

"I’ll tell you, though, this whole business of war would be a hell of a lot more fun if you didn’t get shot."

"Potter studied him. “I never have figured out how smart you are, Featherston, but you’ve made it plain you’re shrewd enough and to spare. If you hadn’t made the fatal mistake of being right at the wrong time, we might have the same rank by now.”"

"The only people who love a war are those who have never fought in one."

"“Maybe we’ll get some use out of battleships in the next war after all.” He didn’t doubt there would be a next war; there would always be a next war."

"“I must conclude that my views on the subject are also the views of the large majority of the American people.” That was probably true. Because of it, Flora did not have a good opinion of the political wisdom of the large majority of the American people. Nationalism kept too many from voting their class interests."

"Don’t do anything to make things worse was the eleventh commandment of the ghetto, at least as important as the original ten."

"Down near the Florida border, Georgia could give South Carolina lessons in heat and humidity."

"Scipio would sooner have gone on without the revolution than the other way around."

"It was like dying and going to hell, except a little hotter and a little stickier. July in Tennessee was not the ideal weather in which to fight in a barrel."

"“I’ve been thinking,” George Enos said…. Beside him, Carl Sturtevant was panting more than a little. “Probably won’t do you any lasting harm,” he said."

"What people believe and what they’ll do because they believe it is a big part of what’s real, especially in politics."

"“You’re still learning the difference between being an agitator and being a politician. Listen to me, Flora.” He sounded very earnest. “Compromise is not a dirty word.” “Maybe it should be,” she answered."

"“Pretty damn soon, the Rebs’ll pack it in here, too, I expect,” Carlton said. “Every blasphemy that passes your lips means a hotter dose of hellfire in the world to come,” McSweeney answered.” I’ve seen enough hellfire right here on earth,” Carlton said. “The kind of the preachers go on about don’t worry me as much as it used to.”"

"“Do I tell you how to arrange your life, Carlton?” he demanded. “Only when you open your mouth,” Ben answered. “Sir.”"

"She looked so angelic, any real angel who saw her would have been extremely suspicious."

"“I never knew any Sonorans before you. You’re a good fellow. You ever get tired of trying to scratch out a living down where you’re at, you bring your family on up to Alabama. Plenty of good farm country there. You’d live high on the hog.” “Thanks, amigo, but no thanks.” Rodriguez’s smile was sweet and sad. “I want to go home. I want to talk español, to see my friends and family. And in Sonora, I am a man. In Alabama, I am a damn greaser.” He tapped a brown hand with a brown finger to remind Pinkard of what he meant. In the trenches, Jeff had long since stopped worrying about their being of different colors. Hip was right, though; it would matter in Alabama."

"“Has anyone ever told you, sir, that you may be too damn smart for your own good?” “A whole raft of people, Colonel Landis,” Morrell answered cheerfully. “Once or twice, they’ve even been right.”"

"A man who couldn’t see truth when it tried to shoot him wouldn’t live long, and didn’t deserve to."

"He hated parliamentary procedure, but he’d started learning it anyhow, even if he did think it was only a way to cheat by the numbers."

"There’s no such thing as glory, near as I can tell. If the machine guns didn’t kill it, the artillery did."

"That held enough truth to be provocative, not enough to be useful."

"“I’ll be all right,” Nellie said. “This is something God meant women to do.” And if that doesn’t prove God is a man, I don’t know what does."

"He was still very young, young enough to believe in the tooth fairy, the common sense of Congress, and a great many other unlikelihoods."

"Your deplorable taste in politics aside, you’re an intelligent man."

"Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn’t the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target."

"“I don’t hide anything I aim to do; I just come right out and say it.” An alarm whistle went off in Anne’s head; any man who said something like that was almost bound to be lying."

"Anne took her own attractiveness so much for granted, a man who showed he wasn’t completely in her grasp often succeeded in piquing her interest by sheer contrariness."

"Proclaiming they had the answers was the easy part. Really having them, and making them work—that looked harder. That looked a hell of a lot harder to him. But some people would buy castles in the air because they were short of beans on the ground."

"Agnes might know what she was doing heading into this marriage, but he didn’t. He had no clue; marriage wasn’t part of the curriculum at West Point. Maybe it should be, he thought. It might not produce better officers, but was very likely to produce happier ones."

"Falling asleep in a corset was impressive proof of what exhaustion could do."

"You can’t get along with somebody who’s bound and determined not to get along with you."

"They wouldn’t understand no matter what, any more than they would understand what life in the trenches was like. Experience brought understanding. Nothing else came close."

"“Something wrong, sir?” Lieutenant Jenkins asked. “No good deed goes unpunished,” Morrell answered."

"“What’s Guinness?” Hirskowitz asked Carsten. “It’s what they make in Ireland instead of beer,” Sam said helpfully. “It’s black as fuel oil, and almost as thick. It tastes kind of burnt till you get used to it. After that, it’s not so bad.” “Oh.” Hirskowitz weighed that. “Well, I’ll see. They make real beer, too?”"

"He spent years alternately chasing her and trying—always without much luck—to get her out of his mind. Now that he’d finally got her, finally found out just how much woman she was, losing her was the last thing he wanted. But two had to say yes. One was plenty for no."

"Soldiers don’t make policy. We only carry it out, and get blamed when it goes wrong."

"Yes, I know I haven’t told you anything. No offense, Sis, but you like running people’s lives so much, you don’t like it when they try and run their own."

"When he came up for air, he gasped, “You never kissed me like that before.” “Well, you never asked me to marry you before, either,” Rita answered. He laughed. They kissed again. Heart pounding, he asked, “What else don’t I know?” “You’ll find out,” she said. “After the wedding.”"

"She knew the sea too well ever to trust it."

"“God bless you, suh, for what you done there.” “I don’t believe in God, anymore than I believe in Mother Goose,” Darrow said. “Foolish notion. But I do believe in justice, and you deserve that. Everyone deserves that.”"

"They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension."

"Flora wasn’t sure she liked that in the abstract; whom a man knew shouldn’t have mattered so much as what he knew. But that didn’t change reality one bit."

"The Confederate States had been founded on the principle that change was a bad idea."

"In a way, misery loves company. In another way, if everyone’s in trouble, nobody can help anybody else get out of it."

"“God done made this happen. He kin make us come through it, too, so long as He take it in His mind He want to do dat.” “Amen,” Athenaeus said. Scipio made himself nod. He didn’t want to seem out of place—seeming out of place was one of his greatest fears, because it was deadly dangerous. But if God had really wanted to do something about this disaster, couldn’t He have stopped it in the first place?"

"Some people had a vested interest in trouble. If it looked as if calm threatened to break out, people like that would do anything they could to thwart it."

"“That’s logical. That’s a rational,” Hosea Blackford said. “Politics, unfortunately, is neither.”"

"A war is a disaster whether you win or you lose—it’s only a worse disaster if you lose."

"Of all the sins in this world, which is more unforgivable than the sin of not having enough money? None I can think of."

"“Your trouble, Major, is that you think people spell prosecute and convict the same way,” Moss said. “That’s not how it works. Even in military court, the defendant’s entitled to a fair shake.”"

"That wasn’t even close to fair, and Sylvia knew it. But she’s already seen that political campaigns weren’t designed to be fair. They were designed to convince, by whatever means possible."

"The only happy people she saw coming out of the place were a young couple, the man carrying a crying baby. Maternity wards are different, Nellie thought as she went past them. I bet they’re the only place in a hospital where people win instead of losing."

"Beauty didn’t last. Brains did."

"Some people, though—some people think yelling something loud enough makes it so."

"Early summer in Nashville made a good practice ground for hell."

"“Sir, don’t you think Utah is a special case?” “Every case has partisans who insist it is special,” Hoover answered. “I recognize none of them. I believe none of them. The same principles must apply throughout the United States.”"

"“He lies. How can you trust a man who lies? You cannot. And any man who comes on the wireless and says, ‘I am going to tell you the truth’—well, what else can he be except a liar?”"

"Manicheism, n., The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition."

"But, as often happened, the official and the real had only a nodding acquaintance with each other."

"Like a lot of jailers, he was convinced the police who hunted down criminals couldn’t find a skunk if it was spraying their leg."

"Maybe not thinking about the price of failure was what marked a hero. On the other hand, maybe it just marked a damn fool."

"You kill everybody who doesn’t want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast."

"“Hoover is one of the best men we’ve ever had for getting things done,” David said, “and one of the worst for figuring out what to do.”"

"“They can’t say anything against the government, not in public they can’t.” “Is it a country or a jail?” Carsten asked. “Near as I can tell, sir,” the second yeoman said, “it’s a jail.”"

"The party and the CSA could get by without a lot of fellows who brought only fanaticism. Losing somebody with brains would have hurt much more. Brains were harder to come by."

"“Sir, you have been poking your nose into matters that do not concern you,” Abell said. “We discourage that.” We? You have a tapeworm? Dowling wondered."

"You can have as much fun in a library as you can at the cinema, and it doesn’t cost you anything."

"She hated the calendar, hated the mirror and what it showed her every morning. A handsome woman, that’s what you are. She would almost rather have been ugly. Then she wouldn’t have to remember the beauty she had been not so long ago."

"“You see?” he said. “You just wanted me to tell you I was wrong.” “Well, of course,” Anne answered, and poked him in the ribs. “What else does a woman want to hear from a man?” “How about, ‘I love you’? How about, ‘You’re beautiful’?” Potter suggested. “Those are nice, too,” she agreed with a smile. “As far as I’m concerned, though, nothing’s better than, ‘You were right.’”"

"“Death is never dignified.” O’Doull spoke with a doctor’s certainty. “Never. Dignity in death is something we invent afterwards to make the living feel better.”"

"Peacetime, though, felt like summertime. Even as you enjoyed it, you knew it wouldn’t last."

"He’d escaped the last dragnet as much by luck as by anything else. You could tell a man not to be stupid, and maybe—if he wasn’t stupid to begin with—he’d listen. But how the devil could you tell a man not to be unlucky?"

"Everyone marched everywhere at Fort Custer. Armstrong had begun to think Thou shalt march' was in the Bible somewhere right below Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain—two commandments he was learning more about violating every day."

"Only two promotions really mattered: the one up from buck private and the one to general’s rank."

"As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all."

"His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace."

"Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer."

"Sometimes a fellow who’d learned what to do with a rifle in his hands didn't care in which direction he pointed it."

"But then, how much of war was finding out the hard way what the other fellow had that you didn't know about ahead of time? Put that way, it sounded quietly philosophical. Put another way, it meant Sam was likely to get killed because some dimbulb in Philadelphia was asleep at the switch."

"“You're lucky as hell, kid,” Moss said, glad to have something to talk about besides the pounding of his heart. “That's only a scratch, and you'll get yourself a Purple Heart on account of it.” “If I'd been lucky, they would have missed me,” the lieutenant said, which held more than a little truth. If he'd been unluckier, though, all the infinite cleverness and articulation of that hand would have been smashed to bloody, bony ruin in less than the blink of an eye."

"If you happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong instant, you could be the best soldier in the world and it wouldn't matter one goddamn bit. Your next of kin would get a wire from the War Department, and that would be that."

"Chester almost said so—almost, but not quite. He and Rita had been married a while now. He’d learned a wise man didn't antagonize his wife over something inherently unprovable, especially when she’d just given him breakfast."

"Sometimes convenience counted for more than ideology."

"“‘The Confederate state must make up for what everyone else has neglected in this field. It must set race at the center of all life. It must take care to keep itself pure.’”"

"The exec usually did Captain Stein's dirty work for him. The skipper got the credit, the exec got the blame: an ancient Navy rule."

"He still couldn't believe she was dead. She’d been one of those fiercely vital people you thought of as going on forever. But life didn't work like that, and war had an obscene power all its own. What it wanted, it took, and an individual’s vitality mattered not at all to it."

"Mirrors reflecting into other mirrors reflecting into other mirrors yet…Intelligence was that kind of game, a chess match with both players moving at the same time and both of them blindfolded more often than not."

"Armstrong Grimes still had a lot to learn about being a soldier, but he understood shooting first and asking questions later."

"During a war, nobody ever showed up on time, except possibly the enemy."

"It was an eminently sensible question. Moss didn't want good sense, though. He wanted to be told what he wanted to hear. That he was thinking like a three-year-old was a telling measure of how tired he was, but he was too tired to realize it."

"Mooers might not have been in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t right at the edges, either."

"Where cool heads had failed, hotheads prevailed."

"Cincinnatus stared at him. That had to be the most cynical assessment he'd ever heard in his life, and he'd heard a lot of them. But, along with the cynicism, it made a lot more sense than he wished it did."

"But when he ached, when he panted, when the world was too much with him, Marx and revolution held a wild temptation. Like cheap booze for a drunk, he thought wearily, except revolutions make people do even stupider things."

"A wise husband didn’t quarrel even when he was right. Quarreling when you knew you were wrong was a recipe for disaster."

"He still sounded earnest and sincere. Flora still had no doubt he meant every word he said, meant it from the bottom of his heart. She also had no doubt he didn't have any idea how irritating he was to her."

"She was willing to give her life for her country. She wasn’t willing to throw it away."

"The artillery duel between U.S. and C.S. guns started up again, each side feeling for the other in the night. Listening to death fly back and forth overhead was almost like watching a tennis match, except both sides could serve at once and there could be more than one ball in the air at the same time."

"He'd have a hell of a time getting anyone to work for him if people knew he might sell them out when that looked like a profitable thing to do. If you had scruples about such things, you didn't belong in Intelligence in the first place."

"Maybe’s a word that makes a lot of people sorry later."

"“How am I?” “Except for being a damn fool for wanting to do this in the first place, you’re healthy as a horse,” Freedman answered. “But if they disqualified every damn fool in the Navy, they’d have twenty-seven men left, and how would they win the war then?”"

"He thought the army could get along without lieutenants much more easily than it could without sergeants. Lieutenants, no doubt, would disagree with him—but what the hell did lieutenants know? If they knew anything, they wouldn't have been lieutenants."

"One of the drawbacks of being President, he’d discovered, was that you couldn’t always call a damn fool a damn fool to his face. Sometimes, no matter how big a damn fool he was, you knew you might need him again one of these days."

"If you call a thing by a name that doesn't seem so repellent, then the thing itself also becomes less repellent. Sympathetic magic—except it wasn't sympathetic to those who fell victim to it."

"And now, just to prove how clever the elected rulers of the country were, they’d decided to reprise what hadn’t worked before."

"The North American air war struck Potter as a duel with machine guns at a pace and a half."

"Never can tell with this, though. That there man taught the Mississippi to be twisty."

"“I know something you don’t know.”… “Oh, yeah? What’s that?” Fishbein bristled at the very idea. “I know you talk too goddamn much.”"

"“People tell me all kinds of things.” Dowling said. “Some of them are true. Some of them help make the flowers grow.”"

"“These here is Army trucks—or trucks the gummint took from the Army,” Lucullus said. “Reckon they gonna be where there's sojers around. Ain’t got to worry ’bout thievin’ a whole hell of a lot.” This time, Cincinnatus laughed. “Only shows what you know. You ain't never seen the kind o’ thievin’ that goes on around Army trucks. I know what I'm talkin’ about there—you’d best believe I do. You start loadin’ stuff in Army trucks, and some of it's gonna walk with Jesus. I don't care how many soldiers you got. I don't care how many guns you got, neither. Folks steal.”"

"“Sorry you woke up while I was tendin’ to it.” “Don't worry about that none,” his father said. “Got us plenty o’ more important things to worry about.” Cincinnatus wished he could have told him he was wrong. And he could have, too—but only if he were willing to lie."

"And a pair of albatrosses glided along behind the Remembrance. They really did look almost big enough to land. He wondered what they thought of the great ship. Or were they too birdbrained to think at all? But this was their home. Men came here only to fight. That being so, who really were the birdbrains here?"

"That was either the most brilliant analysis she’d ever heard—or the most breathtakingly cynical one. For the life of her, she couldn't decide which. Maybe it was both at once. Was that better or worse? She couldn't make up her mind there, either."

"Hardly anything is more pleasant than talking about why other people are a pack of damn fools."

"Security trumped productivity."

"You can only bend the long arm of coincidence so far before you break it."

"They weren't entering a different country, but they were coming into a different world."

"“If we can figure that out, how come the brass can’t?” Szczerbiakowicz asked. “Beats me, Eyechart,” Sam said. “You want stuff to make sense all the time, why the hell’d you join the Navy?”"

"He didn't feel like a knight in shining armor. He was filthy and fleabitten and probably lousy again. If they would have put him on a train and shipped him home, he wouldn't even have turned around to wave good-bye. He was here because the Army told him to be here and would shoot him if he bailed out, not because he thought God willed it. God was bound to have better things to do with His time."

"Nothing was worse than a battlefield. Nothing could be. He was convinced of that. The devil hadn't known how to run hell before he took a long look at a Great War battlefield."

"Rodriguez remained dubious. Everybody who was an old-timer at this, that, or the other thing always went on and on about how tough things had been before all these new fellows came in. Talk was cheap. Talk was also commonly nonsense."

"Morrell laughed out loud. There went one cliché, shot down like a dive bomber with a fighter on its tail."

"Morrell pulled another horrible face. “Makes the war even more wonderful than the bombing raids and the poison gas and the machine guns, doesn't it?” Rohde shrugged. “No doubt. You're the one who makes his living fighting it, though, you and the fellows like you on the other side. I just make mine patching up the ones you don't quite kill.” “Thanks a lot, doc. I love you, too.”"

"The Sandwich Islands. Home of perfect weather, sugar cane, pineapple, and women of several races wearing no more than the perfect weather required. Home of the ukulele, the instrument the Devil had invented when he was trying for the guitar."

"Moonlight had a way of letting you down when you needed it most."

"“Every word you say is true,” O’Doull answered. “Every single word. But saying it, no matter how true it is, doesn't make anybody on either side change his mind.”"

"Like any Vice President, Charlie La Follette was the very definition of an unknown quantity."

"In a poker game, you were either a shark or you were bait."

"The featured entrée with something called Swiss steak. It struck him as a good reason for emigrating from Switzerland."

"A man of strong opinions but limited vocabulary, O’Doull thought."

"He’d got good at the bureaucratic infighting, too, the sort of quiet warfare that measured itself as much by things prevented as by those accomplished."

"“Besides, when you’re smoking you can’t smell the goddamn war so much.” You can’t smell the goddamn war so much. Dowling wouldn’t have put it that way, which didn’t mean the kid was wrong. Even here in Washington, well back of the line, you noted whiffs of that smell. Dowling didn’t know what all went into it. Among the pieces, though, were unburied corpses, unwashed men, and uncovered latrine trenches. Cordite and smoke were two other constants. The smell had a sharper note in this war, for exhaust fumes had largely ousted the barnyard aroma of horses. And there was one other stink that never went away. It blew out of the War Department. With luck, it blew out of the War Department on the other side, too. And it usually did, for most wars went on for a long, long time. No, there was no escaping the all-invasive, all-pervasive reek of stupidity."

"“It’s never too early for the truth,” Summers said, which proved he’d never been a lawyer."

"Like other lower forms of life, second lieutenants were too dumb to know better."

"He trusted Mormons no farther than he could throw them. They were as sneaky a bunch of bastards as you could imagine."

"Dowling had long since abandoned optimism along with the other illusions of his youth."

"The kid from the State Department disappeared. Jake stared after him. Either they really were making them younger than they had once upon a time or he himself was starting to get some serious mileage on him. He suspected the problem did not lie with the State Department."

"The desire not to look bad before one’s fellow man is a strange, compelling, and terribly powerful thing."

"“All things considered, we got away cheap.” “Thank you, Mr. Cooley,” Sam said. We got away cheap. The dead and the maimed would not agree with the exec. Sam found that he was inclined to. War measured what you dished out against what you took."

"He never asked for Pound’s opinion. He didn’t seem to think the War Department had issued opinions to enlisted men. If he’d had a better notion of what he was doing himself, Pound wouldn’t have minded so much. But he never had been able to suffer fools gladly, and he never had been able to suffer in silence, either."

"Like a man who’d sweet-talked a girl into bed with him, Sergeant Pound cared little about the whys and wherefores. All he cared about was that it had happened."

"Poffenberger eyed Pound the way a man wearing a suit made of pork chops might eye a nearby bear."

"A man who expended power on a whim was a fool."

"It was enough to make a man with a conscience feel guilty. Of course, a man with that kind of conscience had no business getting into Intelligence in the first place."

"The American general had chosen the next grandest for his own: another Classical Revival home from before the War of Secession. Sandbagged machine gun nests and a thicket of barbed wire around the place detracted from the air of quiet elegance the colonnaded entranceway tried to project."

"“Are you going to see if history can repeat itself? And are you setting me up to take the fall if it does? It can’t be your fault, after all.” By you he didn’t mean Abell’s alone, but all the officers in Philadelphia who thought of war as theory and maps and not as cordite and burning barrels and mangled men. They were good at what they did. Because they were, they thought they knew everything there was to know about the business of organized slaughter. Morrell had a different, and lower, opinion."

"Will be appointed. Will be accepted. Will be permitted. Abell didn’t say who would do any of those things. He probably didn’t even think about it. In his world, things just happened, without any particular agency. That made him a good bureaucrat. Whether it made him a good soldier was a different question."

"“This would involve cooperation with the Navy,” he said at last. By the way he said it, he might’ve been talking about eating with his fingers. The Army always had the feeling that the Navy didn’t quite pull its weight."

"Because he didn’t much care whether he won or lost, he had a terrific poker face. “Nobody can tell what you’re thinking,” one of the other guys in the game grumbled. “Me? I gave up thinking for Lent,” Chester said. Everybody sitting around the table laughed."

"“Have you noticed there’s something funny in the budget?” “There’s always something funny in the budget,” Flora answered. “We’re in a war. That just makes it funnier than usual.”"

"Of course, the Confederacy was also a Christian country…and what did that say about Christianity? Nothing good, she was sure."

"You couldn’t find an answer if you didn’t know you should be asking the question."

"“Hang on, Doc!” he called. “I got mail for youse guys.” Youse guys was as far outside the bounds of ordinary English as the Confederate y’all. A lot of languages had separate forms for second-person singular and plural. English didn’t, but kept trying to invent them."

"“No, no, no, no, no!” Morrell didn’t pound his head against the wall in the pleasant little clapboard house now doing duty for his headquarters. Why he didn’t, he couldn’t have said. As far as he was concerned, that restraint should have been worth a medal. “We’ve been at war for more than a year now. Hasn’t anybody learned anything about anything?”"

"Nothing like a wound infection to take the romance out of war."

"Don’t be dumber than you can help, all right? If you reckon you’re the only one in the world with troubles, what does that make you? Besides a damn fool, I mean?"

"Second Lieutenant Don Griffiths was typical of the breed. He was young, he didn’t know much, and one of the things he didn’t know was how much he didn’t know."

"“We are going to drive the enemy out of Pennsylvania,” the lieutenant said grandly. “What? All by ourselves?” Pound said. Don Griffiths wagged a finger in his face. “I’ve heard about you, Sergeant—don’t think I haven’t,” he said. “You haven’t got the right attitude.” “Probably not, sir,” Pound agreed politely. “I do object to being killed for no good reason.”"

"Anyone who used a word like obstructions in a sentence was bound to have other things wrong with him, too."

"Will anything be left of either side when this war is over? Potter wondered. More and more, it reminded him of a duel of submachine guns at two paces. Both countries could strike better than they could defend."

"Salt Lake City wasn’t hell, but you could see it from there."

"“People keep coming up with new ways to maim their fellow man. I don’t know why I don’t despair of the human race.” “Somebody once said people were the missing link between apes and human beings,” McDougald said wistfully. “Damned if he didn’t hit that one on the button.”"

"When you got past fifty, you had to take care of yourself the way you took care of a motorcar. You’d break down if you didn’t, and replacement parts for your carcass were mighty hard to come by."

"When three men plot, one is a fool and two are government spies."

"Chester wasn’t about to commit the sin of optimism. Justifiably or not, he feared it would jinx everything."

"Life was what you got, not what you expected."

"The Negro wasn’t wrong. And he understood the difference between deaths and effective deaths. A lot of Great War generals hadn’t—their method for smothering fires was burying them in bodies."

"“You make me wonder about my own country, Spartacus, not just yours.” “Good,” the black man rumbled. “Wonderin’s good. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change till you wonder if it oughta.”"

"The difference between bad and worse is a lot bigger than the difference between good and better."

"“Oderint dum metuant,” O’Doull murmured…. “But it means, ‘let them hate, as long as they fear.’” “Three words,” McDougald said admiringly. “Boy, that packs more into three words than anything this side of ‘I love you.’”"

"Potter knew perfectly well that it was true. He also knew that what was true and what made good propaganda often had not even a nodding acquaintance with each other."

"Cincinnatus Driver hadn’t been under fire for more than twenty-five years. He’d forgotten how much fun it wasn’t."

"“We sure is crazy,” someone would say. “If you ain’t crazy in dis here place, you gots to be nuts.”"

"Reverend Selfe glowered. He was good at glowering. His physiognomy gave him a head start, but he had talent, too."

"“Sinner!” Selfe said again. “Even the Devil can quote Scripture for his purposes.” “No doubt,” Dowling said. “Which of us do you suppose he’s speaking through? And how do you aim to prove it one way or the other?”"

"“I’ve given up having suspicions. They end up getting confirmed, and then I’m unhappy,” the medic said. “I don’t like being unhappy. It makes me sad when I am.”"

"“We’re in a race, and we’d better win.” Eight words. As far as Flora could see, they said everything that needed saying."

"“I’m not afraid,” Edith said. “God will watch over all of us. I know He’s on our side.” Everybody in every war since the world began was convinced God was on his side. Half the people in every war since the world began ended up being wrong."

"The landing craft was as graceful as a fat man waddling along with an anvil. But a fat man lugging an anvil would sink like a stone if he went into the water. The landing craft didn’t. God and the engineers who designed it no doubt knew why it didn’t. Irving Morrell had no idea. He took the notion on faith. Somehow, believing in the landing craft was easier than his Sunday-school lessons had been."

"“Shit!” Pound said, without originality, but with great sincerity."

"You volunteered for this, Cincinnatus reminded himself. Were you born stupid, or did you have to study?"

"The difference between what you counted on and what you got explained why so many people had unhappy marriages."

"Only thing worse than fighting a war and winning is fighting a war and losing."

"“Is it better to get shot in a war your side wins than in one where you lose?” O’Doull persisted. “Better not to get shot at all,” McDougald said, a great and obvious truth to which too many people who went down in history as statesmen were blind."

"Had optimism run that far ahead of common sense?"

"Order did not want to be born; chaos wasn’t ready to die."

"That was true, but, like a lot of true things, didn’t tell the whole story or even most of it."

"Well, what was life but the difference between what you planned and what you got?"

"In war, proving the other guy was wrong often meant proving he had no business breathing."

"Spend all your time thinkin’ ’bout tomorrow, you ain’t gonna live to git there."

"Patton stared at him. “Then why doesn’t he throw you in irons, the way you deserve?” “Because he knows I think with my head, not with my heart or my balls,” Potter answered. “It’s really a useful technique. You ought to try it one of these days…sir.”"

"What did he do for fun? Anything? Poor bastard, Sam thought. Zwilling probably got his kicks telling other people what to do. If that wasn’t a dead-end street, Sam had never seen one."

"I’ve always tried to be a rational man. I don’t have much use for the idea of miracles. Things are what they are, that’s all."

"A rocket can’t be that accurate…can it? But that’s only a wild-ass guess—excuse the technical term."

"“Did anybody know what a nasty war this would be before they went and started it?” “Does anybody ever?”"

"Quantity had a quality of its own."

"“Half of being smart is knowing what you’re not smart at,” Jake said. “Plenty of folks reckon that ’cause they know something, they know everything. And that ain’t the way it works.” “I never said it was,” Goldman answered primly. “Yeah, I know,” Jake said. “You make one.”"

"“We can beat the enemy,” he said to nobody in particular, “but God help us against our own side.” “Headquarters being stupid again?” Scullard asked sympathetically. “They’d have to wise up to get to stupid.” Warming to his theme, Pound added, “They’ve got their headquarters in the their hindquarters.”"

"Yes, they’d learned plenty of lessons from the enemy, but so what? Where you learned your lessons didn’t matter. That you learned them did."

"Was that savage cynicism or sage common sense? When it came to gauging the chances of peace and war, how much difference was there?"

"“Got any rations you don’t need?” one of them asked, stretching out his hands imploringly to Cassius. “You feed me if I was in there?” Cassius asked. “Well, I hope so,” the man answered after a perceptible pause for thought. “I’m a Christian, or I try to be.” “Reckon Jake Featherston’s a Christian, too?” “Sure he is,” the POW said, this time without hesitation. “He loves Jesus, same as you’n me. Jesus loves him, too. “Fuck you, you ofay asshole.” Cassius turned away. “You can starve.” “You ain’t no Christian,” the Confederate called after him. “If Jake Featherston is, I don’t want to be.”"

"“Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?” “I hope there’s gray, Menefee said. “Black and white make things easier, but only if you don’t want to think.”"

"I think this is called peace. We used to have it all the time."

"They smelled of old sweat and leather and tobacco and mud: like soldiers, in other words."

"He could speak clear English when he wanted to. Why didn’t he want to more often?"

"Somewhere between half a mile and a quarter of a mile from what the officers were calling ground zero, there was no sidewalk or even rubble under foot. Everything has been fused to what looked like rough, crude glass. It felt like hard, unyielding glass under Flora’s feet, too. “My God,” she said over and over. She wasn’t the only one, either. She watched a Catholic Congressman cross himself, and another take out a rosary and move his lips in prayer. When you saw something like this, what could you do but pray? But wasn’t a God Who allowed such things deaf to mere blandishments?"

"Down underneath, there wasn’t much difference between people and animals. War brought that out all kinds of ways."

"It was like trying to kill a butterfly with an axe."

"“You may not care about famous, buddy, but famous is gonna care about you,” the photographer predicted."

"Then he realized what it really was: a possum. It looked like a cat-sized rat that had got its nose stuck in a pencil sharpener. The long, bare pinkish tail seemed vaguely obscene. Lieutenant Colonel Torricelli was looking in the same direction. “If that’s not the ugliest thing God ever made, damned if I know what it is,” he said. “Now that Jake Featherston’s dead, I agree with you.”"

"Hal Williamson shook his hand and said, “Good luck to you, buddy. Goddamn if I didn’t learn something from you.” “What’s that?” Cincinnatus asked. “Colored guys—you’re just like anybody else, only darker,” Hal answered. Cincinnatus laughed. “Shit, I’ll that that. Good luck to you, too, man.”"

"The roll of the dice, the turn of the card…Some guys had a shell burst ten feet away from them and didn’t get badly hurt. Some turned into hamburger. Who could say why? God, maybe. From everything Jorge had seen, He had a rugged sense of humor."

"That wasn’t even remotely fair, but politics wasn’t about being fair. Politics was about getting your guy in and keeping the other side’s guy out. Once you’d done that, you could do all the other neat stuff you had in mind. If you stood on the sidelines looking longingly toward the playing field, all the neat ideas in the world weren’t worth a dime."

"Nothing the government touches ever ends up looking just the way you thought it would before you started—you need to understand that right from the beginning, or else you start going crazy."

"“Aren’t you lucky…sir?” “Yeah. I’m lucky like snow is black,” Morrell answered."

"Pound saw problems and solutions with an almost vicious clarity. As far as he was concerned, everything was simple. And damned if watching him in action didn’t make you wonder whether he had it right and everybody else looked at the world through a kaleidoscope that made everything seem much more complicated than it should have."

"Jonathan Moss didn’t like Houston. It was even hotter and muggier than Georgia and Alabama, and that was saying something. New Orleans was supposed to be just as bad, or maybe worse, but you could have a good time in New Orleans. If you could have a good time in Houston, Moss hadn’t found out how."

"You have to understand what you’re fighting for. Otherwise, you were an animal—a brave animal, maybe, but an animal all the same."

"Pound got back into his uniform. “See you again, maybe,” he said. She nodded. If she was enthusiastic, she hid it very well. She didn’t mind his money, but she sure wasn’t thrilled about him. Well, he was old enough to be her father. And he was a damnyankee. And she was a whore and he was a trick. That left it fourth down and time to punt."

"After a case like that, writing about the work O’Doull had done during the war didn’t seem so bad. That, at least, had mattered. This? While he was sewing and splinting and cutting, he looked forward to this with a fierce and simple longing. Now that he had it again, he discovered the danger of getting exactly what you thought you wanted. It could prove as unfortunate in real life as in fairy tales."

"The only way you could keep from getting old was by dying before you made it."

"“When I started, no one was sure what the machine gun was worth. Now FitzBelmont talks about blowing up Rhode Island with one bomb.” “Best thing that could happen to it,” Abell observed."

"“Do you know what Mobile is?” Sam Carsten said. “Tell me,” Lon Menefee urged him. “Mobile is what New Orleans would’ve been if it was settled by people without a sense of humor,” Sam said."

"“Glad you’re back safe. I heard you were wounded—happy it wasn’t too serious.” “Yeah.” The only wound that wasn’t serious was the one that happened to the other guy."

"“Stuck in fucking Alabama,” Armstrong Grimes grumbled. “What could be worse than this?” Squidface was cleaning his captured automatic Tredegar. He looked up from the work. “Well, you could be in hell,” he said. “Who says I’m not?” Armstrong said. It’s a godforsaken miserable place, and I can’t get out of it. If that’s not hell, what do you call it?” “Pittsburgh,” Squidface answered."

"Dying Boudicca managed a feeble nod, and sent her last words out to a breathlessly silent Theatre: "E'en so; 'Tis true. Oh!- I feel the poison! We Britons never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when we do first help to wound ourselves, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue, If Britons to themselves do rest but true." She fell back and lay dead. Shakespeare strode forward, to the very front of the stage. Into more silence, punctuated only by sobs, he said, "No epilogue here, unless you make it; If you want your freedom, go and take it.""

"And then, to Shakespeare's amazement and dismay, Burbage and Will Kemp tramped forward together, both of them plainly intent on marching on the Tower of London, too. Shakespeare seized Burbage's arm. "Hold, Dick!" he said urgently. "Let not this wild madness infect your wit. Can a swarm of rude mechanicals pull down those gray stone walls? The soldiers on 'em'll work a fearful slaughter. Throw not your life away." Before Burbage could answer, Will Kemp did: "The soldiery on the walls may work a fearful slaughter, ay, an they have the stomach for't. But think you 'twill be so? A plot that stretcheth to the Theatre surely shall not fall short of the tower.""

"But no line of ferocious, lean-faced, swarthy Spaniards appeared. Shouts and cries and the harsh snarl of gunfire suggested the dons were busy, desperately busy, elsewhere in London. When chance swept Shakespeare and Richard Burbage together for a moment, the player said, "Belike they'll make a stand at the tower." "Likely so," Shakespeare agreed unhappily. Those frowning walls had been made to hold back an army, and this... thing he was a part of was anything but. Up Tower Hill, where he'd watched the auto de fe almost a year before. A great roar, a roar full of triumph, rose from the men in front of him as they passed the crest of the hill and swept on towards the Tower Ditch and the walls beyond. And when Shakespeare crested the hill himself, he looked ahead and roared too, in joy and amazement and suddenly flaring hope. Will Kemp had been right, right and more than right. All the gates to the Tower of London stood open."

"Someone bumped into Shakespeare: Will Kemp. The clown made a leg- a cramped leg, in the crush- at him. "Give you good den, gallowsbait," he said cheerfully. "Go to!" Shakespeare said. "Meseems we are well begun here." "Well begun, ay. And belike, soon we shall be well ended, too." Kemp jerked his head to one side, made his eyes bulge, and stuck out his tongue as if newly hanged. With a shudder, Shakespeare said, "If your wind of wit sit in that quarter, why stand you here and not with the Spaniards?" "Why?" Kemp kissed him on the cheek. "Think you're the only mother's son born a fool in England?""

"For the Spanish Armada to have conquered England in 1588 would not have been easy. King Philip's fleet would have needed several pieces of good fortune it did not get: a friendlier wind at Calais, perhaps, one that might have kept the English from launching their fireships against the Armada; and a falling-out between the Dutch and English that could have let the Duke of Parma put to sea from Dunkirk and join his army to the Duke of Medina Sidonia's fleet for the invasion of England. Getting Spanish soldiers across the Channel would have been the hard part. Had it been accomplished, the Spanish infantry, the best in the world at the time and commanded by a most able officer, very probably could have beaten Elizabeth's forces on land."

"What people believed often turned out to be true just because they believed it. Charlatans and mages were quick to take advantage of that."

"And Ulric was a man of parts, no doubt about it. Just what the parts added up to…Yes, that was a different question."

"Hopes were only shadows that too often vanished in the pitiless light of reality."

"Believe worked well enough when a man could not measure it against facts. But when he could…Facts crushed to belief like a mammoth crushing a vole."

"“Knowledge is strange,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carry different tools on his belt. Should he not carry different tools in his head as well?”"

"Ulric Skakki’s smile was so charming, it made Hamnet distrust him on sight—as if he didn’t already."

"“And do you know of opossums? Have they come this far north?” “I have seen one or two.” Sarus made a face. “Horrible things, like big rats with pointed faces.”"

"Mosquitoes laid eggs in those ponds and then rose in buzzing, biting swarms. Sometimes the clouds of them were thick enough to dim the sun. It was as if the soul of a vampire were reincarnated in a million beings instead of just one."

"“Foolishness,” Ulric Skakki said. “Everything that goes on between men and women is full of foolishness.”"

"A man who gets angry at the truth will have a hard time in life, don’t you think?"

"Hamnet Thyssen wondered if Witigis was a holy man or simply a madman. His vacant features didn’t promise much in the way of brains."

"If they had lawyers instead of teeth, they’d be as bad as people."

"“By God, you are a hateful man!” “Anyone who tells you anything you don’t want to hear is a hateful man,” Hamnet answered."

"He thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. Of course he did—she agreed with him."

"If Earl Eyvind wanted to talk nonsense, he was welcome to, as far as Hamnet was concerned. If he wanted anyone else to take him seriously when he did…that was another story altogether."

"Women are what made me the way I am now. I do not believe the illness is also the cure."

"“Mammoths make me believe in God,” Trasimund said… “How could mammoths make themselves? God had to do it.” “You could say the same thing about mosquitoes.” Eyvind Torfinn punctuated the observation by slapping. “You could even say God liked mosquitoes better than mammoths, because he made so many more of them.”"

"“You believe in reincarnation, then?” Eyvind Torfinn asked eagerly. “Have you evidence to support your belief?”"

"From what I’ve seen, people who brag a lot are usually trying to convince themselves even more than other people."

"“And if you don’t bet, how do you expect to win?” Hamnet Thyssen didn’t look at things that way. To him, not betting meant you couldn’t lose. He hadn’t even thought of winning."

"He didn’t care what she thought, and, in not caring, he felt as if a curse were lifted from his back."

"“Sometimes I think I don’t know everything that’s going on,” Ulric Skakki said in tones full of mock self-pity. Count Hamnet reached out and set a consoling hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes I don’t think you know what‘s going on, either.”"

"Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered."

"If you were half as funny as think you are, you’d be twice as funny as you really are."

"If barbarians recognized that they were barbarians, they wouldn’t be so barbarous any more."

"A horsefly can't do a horse much real damage, but it can drive it wild anyhow."

"People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose."

"Himmler steepled his fingers. "Well, Reinhard, what brings you up from Prague today?" His voice was fussy and precise, like a schoolmaster's."

"Finally the Reichsfuehrer said, "Well, you've given me a good deal to think about. I can hardly deny that. We'll see what comes of it." "The longer we wait, the more trouble we'll have doing it properly," Heydrich warned. "I understand that," Himmler said testily. "I have to make sure I can get it moving without... undue difficulties, though." "As you say, sir!" Heydrich was all obedience, all subordination. Why not? Himmler played the cards close to his chest, but Heydrich was pretty sure he'd won."

"He and Don came up to the corpse of the German truck. The scrounger who'd been messing around there was gone. "Who's that asshole gonna sell his scrap to?" Charlie said. "Us- you wait and see. We're dumb enough to pay good money to put these mothers back on their feet now that we stomped 'em." "Yeah, that's like us, all right," Dom agreed. "We-" The truck blew up. Next thing Charlie knew, he was sprawled on the ground a surprisingly long way from the road. Dom- no, a piece of Dom- lay not far away. Charlie tried to reach out. His arm didn't want to work. When he looked down at what was left of himself, he understood why. It didn't hurt. Then, all at once, it did. His shriek bubbled through the blood filling his mouth. Mercifully, blackness enfolded him."

"What will we do when they start capturing our people?" Klein asked. "They will, you know, if they haven't by now. Things go wrong." Heydrich's fingers drummed some more. He didn't worry about the laborers who'd expanded this redoubt- they'd all gone straight to the camps after they did their work. But captured fighters were indeed another story. He sighed. "Things go wrong. Ja. If they didn't, Stalin would be lurking somewhere in the Pripet Marshes, trying to keep his partisans fighting against us. We would've worked Churchill to death in a coal mine." He barked laughter. "The British did some of that for us, when they threw the bastard out of office last month. And we'd be getting ready to fight the Amis on their side of the Atlantic. But... things went wrong." "Yes, sir." After a moment, Klein ventured, "Uh, sir- you didn't answer my question." "Oh. Prisoners." Heydrich had to remind himself what his aide was talking about. "I don't know what to do, Klein, except make sure our people all have cyanide pills." "Some won't have the chance to use them. Some won't have the nerve," Klein said. Not many men had the nerve to tell Reinhard Heydrich the unvarnished truth. Heydrich kept Klein around not least because Klein was one of those men. They were useful to have. Hitler would have done better had he seen that. Heydrich recognized the truth when he heard it now; one more thing Hitler'd had trouble with."

"Eisenhower climbed down from his jeep. Two unsmiling dogfaces with Tommy guns escorted him to a lectern in front of the church's steps. The sun glinted from the microphones on the lectern... and from the pentagon of stars on each of Ike's shoulder straps. "General of the Army" was a clumsy title, but it let him deal with field marshals on equal terms. He tapped a mike. Noise boomed out of speakers to either side of the lectern. Had some bright young American tech sergeant checked to make sure the fanatics didn't try to wire explosives to the microphone circuitry? Evidently, because nothing went kaboom. "Today it is our sad duty to pay our final respects to one of the great soldiers of the 20th century. General George Smith Patton was admired by his colleagues, revered by his troops, and feared by his foes," Ike said. If there were a medal for hypocrisy, he would have won it then. But you were supposed tp only speak well of the dead. Lou groped for the Latin phrase, but couldn't come up with it. "The fear our foes felt for General Patton is shown by the cowardly way they murdered him: from behind, with a weapon intended to take out tanks. They judged, and rightly, that George Patton was worth more to the U.S. Army than a Stuart or a Sherman or a Pershing," Eisenhower said. "Damn straight, muttered the man standing next to Lou. He wore a tanker's coveralls, so his opinion of tanks carried weight. Tears glinted in his eyes, which told all that needed telling if his opinion of Patton."

""I have one more message for you men, and for the SS goons who skulk in the woods and in the darkness," Eisenhower said. "It's very simple. We are going to stay here as long as it takes to make sure Germany can never again trouble the peace of the world." He probably expected more cheers then. He got... a few. Lou was one of the men who clapped. The guy in the tanker's coveralls edged away, as if afraid he had something contagious. That saddened him without much surprising him. He wondered how many of the others who applauded there were also Jewish. Quite a few, unless he missed his guess. Yes, Eisenhower had looked for more in the way of approval there. He'd acted professionally grim before. Now his eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down. He wasn't just grim any more; he was pissed off."

"Lieutenant General Vlasov had looked and acted like a son of a bitch the last time Bokov and Shteinberg called on him. He seemed even less friendly now. For twenty kopeks, his expression said, both of the other NKVD men could find out how they liked chopping down spruces in the middle of Siberian winter."

""I know what the two of you are here for," Vlasov rasped. "You're going to try and talk me into sucking the Americans' cocks." "No, Comrade General, no. Nothing like that," Shteinberg said soothingly. Yes, Comrade General, yes. Just like that, Vladimir Bokov thought fiercely. He wanted to watch Vlasov squirm. Maybe they could have kept the crash from happening if only the miserable bastard had put his ass in gear. "Don't bother buttering me up, zhid," Vlasov said. "Nothing but a waste of time." "However you please... sir." Moisei Shteinberg held his voice under tight control. "My next move, if you keep dicking around with us, is to write to Marshal Beria and let him know how you're obstructing the struggle against the Heydrichite bandits." "You wouldn't dare!" General Vlasov bellowed. "Yes, I would. I've already done it," Shteinberg said. "And if anything happens to me, the letter goes to Moscow anyway. I've taken care of that, too... sir." "Fuck your mother hard!" "Maybe my father did," Shteinberg answered calmly. "But at least I know who he was... sir." Could looks have killed, Yuri Vlasov would have shouted for men to come and drag two corpses out of his office."

""If it works, he'll take the credit," Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters. "Oh, sure," Shteinberg agreed. "But he'd do that anyway." Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking- or wrong."

"Outside the building, Lou smoked a last cigarette and shot the shit with one of the German gendarmes who'd be taking over the place once the Americans were gone. Rolf was a pretty good guy. He'd been a corporal during the war- but Wehrmacht, not Waffen-SS. In his dyed-black U.S. fatigues and American helmet, he looked nothing like a German soldier. So Lou tried to tell himself, anyhow. "We will miss you when you go," the gendarme said. "You are the only thing standing between us and chaos." "You guys will do fine on your own," Lou answered. You always assured a sickroom patient, even- especially- when you didn't think he'd make it."

"Rolf Halbritter coughed from the dust the retreating convoy kicked up. He shook his head in wonder not far from awe. The Amis were really and truly going- no, really and truly gone. Which meant... He had a badge pinned on the underside of his collar, where it didn't show. Now he could wear it openly again. It was round, with a red outer ring that carried a legend in bronze letters: NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE DEUTSCHE ARBEITERPARTEI. The white inner circle held a black swastika. Every Party member had one just like it. Pretty soon, they'd all be showing it, too."

"There really was a German resistance movement after V-E Day. It was never very effective; it got off to a very late start, as the Nazis took much longer than they might have to realize they weren't going to win the straight-up war. And it was hamstrung because the Wehrmacht, the SS, the Hitler Youth, the Luftwaffe, and the Nazi Party all tried to take charge of it- which often meant, for all practical purposes, no one took charge of it. By 1947, it had mostly petered out."

"Conservatives define compassion not by the number of people who receive some kind of government aid but rather by the number of people who no longer need it."

"I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport."

"This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history — and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title."

"The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men."

"Sure he (Fred Astaire) was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards... and in high heels."

"When I was bullied: you manned-up. You learned something. You realized: I'm not getting the gold star. You realized: you lose. Deal with it."

"I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited. I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do."

"I read it for the first time in about 20 years this year–-recently. It wasn't so bad. I get it. I get fan mail now from people who weren't really born yet when the book came out. I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. I know that sounds so ambiguous. It's sort of out of my hands and it has its reputation so what can you do about it? There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19. I was pretty surprised by the level of writing."

"It might be my favorite book of mine. It was a very exciting time in my life. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for."

"I reread that book in the summer of '03. . . . And I hadn't looked at that book either since '91. And I was dreading it. I thought it was going to be a really terrible novel. Everything everyone had ever said about it was going to be true. . . . And I started reading it... and I was surprised. It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. Not nearly as weighted down with the importance that I thought I was investing it with. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to reread those passages."

"It's definitely the book that I can tell—I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer–-is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it."

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."

"Disappear here."

"...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or Junior and usually somestimes at her boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N.Y.U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get Screwed party, or a townie."

"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so."

""Wait," she gasps. "What?" I moan, puzzled but almost there. "Luis is a despicable twit," she gasps, trying to push me out of her. "Yes," I say, leaning on top of her, tonguing her ear. "Luis is a despicable twit. I hate him too," and now, spurred on by her disgust for her wimp boyfriend, I start moving faster, my climax approaching. "No, you idiot," she groans. "I said Is it a receptacle tip? Not 'Is Luis a despicable twit.' Is it a receptacle tip? Get off me." "Is what a what? I moan. "Pull out," she groans, struggling. "I'm ignoring you," I say, moving my mouth down on her small perfect nipples, both of them stiff, sitting on hard, big tits. "Pull out, goddamnit!" she screams. "What do you want, Courtney?" I grunt, slowing my thrusts down until I finally straighten up and then I'm just kneeling over her, my cock still half inside. She hunches back against the headboard and my dick slides out."

"As the salesgirl rings up Charles's purchases, I'm playing with the baby while Nancy holds her, offering Glenn my platinum American Express card, and she grabs at it excitedly, and I'm shaking my head, talking in a high-pitched baby voice, squeezing her chin, waving the card in front of her face, cooing, "Yes I'm a total psychopathic murderer, oh yes I am, I like to kill people, oh yes I do, honey, little sweetie pie, yes I do...""

"Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I'm suddenly jolted with a mournful despair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child's life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It's so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy."

"The smell of meat and blood clouds up the condo until I don't notice it anymore. And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer - all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt."

"This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in... this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged..."

"...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed."

"My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this – and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed – and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing..."

"Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I'm twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh..." and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry's is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes' color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT."

"Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?—no, that one—the second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer's name is—a master craftsman not—mistook me for someone else so I couldn't register the complaint, but, gentlemen—and ladies—there they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they don't look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machine—so I don't want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and don't leave out why, though I'm getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why won't get answered—now, come on, goddamnit, what's the story?"

"We'll slide down the surface of things..."

"'As a general rule you shouldn't expect too much from people darling,' and then I kiss her on the cheek."

"'I just had my makeup done, so you can't make me cry.'"

"She staggers over to the bathroom door and grabs the edge of it to balance herself and blood starts running down her legs in thin rivulets and when she lifts up the robe we both can see her underwear soaked with blood and she pulls it off, panicking, and suddenly a huge gush of blood expels itself from beneath the robe, splashing all over the bathroom floor.She gasps, a thick noise comes out of her throat and she doubles over, grabbing her stomach, then she screams. Looking surprised and still clutching her stomach, she vomits will staggering backwards, collapsing onto the bathroom floor. There are strands of tissue hanging out of her."

"I'm Christian Bale", Russel, says, taking [her hand]. "Oh right," she says. "Yeah, I thought I recognized you. You're the actor."

"The stars are real. The future is that mountain."

"You do an awfully good impression of yourself."

"And now the missing Boy Scout inevitably provoked the flicker of worry I experienced every morning before Robby and Sarah went off to school, especially if the hangover was bad or I'd had too much coffee. This wide-awake nightmare lasted no more than thirty seconds, a rapid montage that nonetheless required a Klonopin: a rampage at the school, "I'm so scared" being whispered over the cell phone, what sounds like firecrackers popping off in the background, the ricocheting bullet that hurls the second-grader to the floor,the random firing in the library, the blood sprayed over an unfinished exam, the red pools of it forming on the linoleum, the desk spattered with viscera, a wounded teacher ushering dazed children out of the cafeteria, the custodian shot in the back, the girl murmuring "I think I've been hit" before she faints, the CNN vans arriving, the stuttering sheriff at the emergency press conference, the bulletins flashing on TV screens, the "concerned" anchorman offering updates, the helicopters hovering, the final moments when the gunman places the Magnum in his mouth, the overcrowded hospital emergency rooms and the gymnasiums transformed into makeshift morgues, the yellow crime tape ribboned around an entire playground - and then, in the aftermath: the .22 rifle missing from the stepfather's cabinet, the journal recounting the boy's rejection and despair, a boy who took the teasing hard, the boy who had nothing to lose, the Elavil that didn't take hold or the bipolar disorder not detected, the book on witchcraft found beneath the bed, the X carved into his chest and the attempted suicide the month before, the broken hand from punching a wall, the nights lying in bed counting to a thousand, the pet rabbit found later that afternoon hanged from a hook in a small closet - and, finally, the closing images of the endless coverage: the flag at half-staff, the memorial services, the hundreds of bouquets and candles and toys that filled the steps leading up to the school, the bloody hand of a victim on the cover of Newsweek, the questions asked, the simple shrugs, the civil suits filed, the copycats, the reasons you quit praying. Still, the worst news comes out of your own child's mouth: "But he was normal, Dad - he was just like me.""

"I hear today's college women are 'prodigious.'" "Prodigious? Is that what you heard?" "Well, I read it in a magazine. It was something I wanted to believe." "The Jayster. Always a dreamer."

"That doesn't sound like...the Jayster."

"A case could be made for Mr. Ellis as a covert moralist and closet sentimentalist, the best kind, the kind who leaves you space in which to respond as your predispositions nudge you, whether as a commissar or hand-wringer or, like me, as an admirer of his intelligence and craft."

"Forget me not, or I'll forget myself."

"At 13, I was fearless. I looked at everything so positive. When you're older and been through it all, you know how bad it can get. There is a fear of failing."

"As a child, I'd wonder, 'When I die, will people still remember me 1,000 years later?' And without the gold medal … Well, the Olympics are the ultimate achievement in my sport. At times I think, 'Why should I push myself all those long hours in the rink?' But then I think, 'How will I ever know how good I could have been?' I want to be the Michael Jordan of my sport."

"It's incredible. Nine? Wow. I just remember winning my first one, getting the medal and the plate, the pin with the diamond for first place. My ninth title, I have no answer for that because I never thought it would be possible."

"I admit it worked fairly well but my first reaction was to get up and walk away from the job, but I couldn't. Once you've heard music like that with the picture, it makes your own scoring more difficult to arrive at, it clouds your thinking. Later, as an inside joke, I included a snippet of the Strauss in the score-and some critic pounced on me for stealing. You can´t win."

"The fact that certain composers have been able to create first-class music within the medium of film proves that film music can be as good as the composer is gifted."

"Working to timings and synchronizing your musical thoughts with the film can be stimulating rather than restrictive. Scoring is a limitation but like any limitation is can be made to work for you. Verdi, except for a handful of pieces, worked best when he was 'turned on' by a libretto. The most difficult problem in music is form, and in a film you already have this problem solved for you. You are presented with a basic structure, and a blueprint, and provided the film has been well put together, and well edited, it often suggests its rhythms and tempo. The quality of the music is strictly up to the composer. Many people seem to assume that because film music serves the visual it must be something of secondary value. Well, the function of any art is to serve a purpose in society. For many years, music and painting served religion. The thing to bear in mind is that film is the youngest of the arts, and that scoring is the youngest of the music arts. We have a great deal of development ahead of us."

"You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account"

"It's nice to think about the Golden Age of Hollywood, with the big studios and their fabulous music departments and the hundreds of films coming out every year. But it's gone. In some ways the composer today is more fortunate, provided he can find a good film, because he can attempt more than he could two decades ago. Twelve-tone music was unheard of during Max Steiner's heyday, as were any other avant-garde techniques. Finally, the future of film music rests with the composers themselves. If they take their work seriously and turn out the best that is within them, then perhaps we can persuade not only the public, but the filmmakers that good music is valuable in films. The public is not stupid. If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will, then it will be because it is good."

"Originally I was supposed to do Grand Prix, but I was under contract to 20th Century Fox at that time and Alex North was supposed to do Sand Pebbles, but he got sick, so Fox preempted me out of Grand Prix, and to my good fortune, I got to do Sand Pebbles. It was my first time working with Robert Wise and it was a great experience."

"Jerry Goldsmith is an artist who meets all the demands upon the composer in films. He communicates, integrates, subordinates, supports, and designs with discipline."

"Media pundit John Gibson's controversial statements brought criticism when he referred to religions, other than his own, as "wrong". Christians tolerate those who are "following the wrong religion ... as long as they're civil and behave""

"Make more babies" because in "(t)wenty-five years ... the majority of the population is Hispanic."

"When London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, Gibson said that he regretted that Paris had not been chosen because it would have subjected that city to the threat of terrorism."

"He also has stated that no one would care if France was a victim of a terrorist attack.Fox's Gibson on "golden opportunity" missed: If France had been selected for 2012 Olympics, terrorists would "blow up Paris, and who cares?""

"Following the positive HIV test of adult actress Darren James on April 13, 2004, a new HIV scare led to a search for all potentially infected partners of the actor, as well as a two-month shut down of adult movie production in Los Angeles. Commenting on this on April 29, 2004, Gibson said that the actors "should not be surprised, considering what they do" and noted that "this was bound to happen to them sooner or later"."

"On the July 12, 2005, edition of Fox News's The Big Story, host John Gibson said that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove should be given "a medal" for outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, adding that Plame "should have been outed by somebody.""

"On the January 19 2006 edition of Fox News's The Big Story, after the release of a tape by Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Gibson stated, "(Bin Laden) is talking to America's far left and saying, 'You know what. We're on the same side. So why don't you work on that hardhead George W. Bush? Bin Laden told us Thursday that our far left has been working for him. It's their poll results he quotes.'""

"In his defense of Ambassador John Bolton and repudiation of the United Nations and the Third World, referring to the Third World, "That latter group includes a huge number of so-called nations, little more than spots on the map that would get invaded, taken over, subsumed, eliminated, except no-one wants to get stuck with their problems of poverty, disease and corruption.""

"On the May 10 2006, edition of Fox New's The Big Story, after the release of a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to U.S. President George W. Bush, Gibson compared the letter from the Iranian President to talking points and positions by Democrats. Gibson said, "Terry McAuliffe and the other Democrats should pay close attention to their talking points these days. That nut job running Iran, President &mdash; let's see if I can pronounce it &mdash; Ahmadinejad, sent President Bush a letter, and if it weren't postmarked Tehran, it might have been mistaken for a crank letter from an angry leftist in L.A. or Boulder or Cambridge, Massachusetts. Christians are not acting like Christians, says the Iranian president. Democrat talking point. WMD lies, says the Iranian president. Democrat talking point. Human-rights abuses in Gitmo. Another Democrat talking point. The gap between haves and have-nots. The Iranian president and the Dems in lockstep on that one, too.""

"On the May 11 2006 broadcast of The Big Story, Gibson called for caucasians to have more children. His reasoning appeared to be in part to prevent Hispanics from ever being the racial majority in America. It is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau that persons of Hispanic descent will make up well over one-third of the U.S. population by the year 2050. The next day he said that he meant all Americans should have more children."

"The one thing that drives me up the wall is [people] saying, 'Look at all the deaths you Americans have caused in Iraq.' No! 'Scuse me? We invaded the place, we knocked over Saddam, and then Iraqis began killing each other... [B]ut who is doing this killing? Give me a break. These are Iraqis killing each other. So what did we do? If you're saying it's our fault that we unmasked them as knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century &mdash; fine! I'll take credit."

"[The PlayStation 2 is a] historic, a mass-market appliance that fundamentally changes society in the way the printing press did."

"[PlayStation 2] is a new canvas for humanity that takes us back to our nature."

"If you look at any institution in history – look at the Roman Empire – anything in history, and what it looks like when it’s peaking. Look at Apple, and how can you say it’s not peaking? ... The thing is, it may take another year or two before it starts to decline, but it has to – everything does."

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. Such extremism comes easily to men who have doped themselves with delusions of their own unblemished virtue and the rascality of others."

"More and more Americans feel threatened by runaway technology, by large-scale organization, by overcrowding. More and more Americans are appalled by the ravages of industrial progress, by the defacement of nature, by man-made ugliness. If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery."

"Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clear air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery."

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

"History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable."

"We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit."

"One of the reasons why mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less. Learning is a risky business, and they do not like failure."

"The future announces itself from afar. But most people are not listening. The noisy clatter of the present drowns out the tentative sound of things to come. The sound of the new does not fit old perceptual patterns and goes unnoticed by most people. And of the few who do perceive something coming, most lack the energy, initiative, courage or will to do anything about it. Leaders who have the wit to perceive and the courage to act will be credited with a gift of prophecy that they do not necessarily have.""

"I respect Floyd as a fighter but come 5 May, he's going to be hurting for weeks."

"He can have heart, he can hit harder and he can be stronger, but there's no fighter smarter than me."

"We don't wanna leave you, but...but we got to...wish this point right here, wish it could last forever right now! Yeah...it's kinda like one big orgasm!"

"You'll never get me into a tux. Not until I'm dead and I have no choice because that's what the undertaker put me in."

"It'll say, 'Danny Elfman, who wrote the theme to 'The Simpsons,' etcetera...That's what I'll be remembered for."

"For a while, I was friends with Danny Elfman. He is certainly talented and has done some great music for film. But after talking with him several times when I was having trouble dealing with a movie producer or the agents that we shared, I realized his true genius was dealing with these people."

"That was intense. REALLY intense. Well, not really intense. But pretty intense."

"Today's debate: Is it wrong to be strong? You be the judge."

"Water-based lube: Friend or Foe?"

"With a simple shave of the razor Steve-O easily disguises himself in fooling the whale shark in thinking he's a harmless young boy."

"Some people just don't know how to party."

"Hi I'm Bunny the Lifeguard and if any of these alligators try to ruin our swimming, I'm gonna wrestle 'em to the ground and probably have my way with them."

"Wait a minute. I already know my fortune, it's partying!"

"I guess I don't have any last words. I'm just gonna kill myself once I lose my wiener."

"I'm gonna be so bummed when they announce my sexually transmitted diseases."

"You look cool, Steve-0."

"For one thing, God didn't invent the circumcision, I did."

"I gotta get in term with my sexuality, I gotta know what I'm all about."

"Pedal faster! Come on, there are crocodiles in this water and I hear they'll eat anything - even plastic!"

"They say Poland is the Mexico of Europe. I don't know what that means, but I like it."

"There's a very good chance we could be riding each other to Russia."

"Hi, I'm bunny the life guard and if there's any life-saving to do I'm the man to do it"

"When he's asleep, I wish he was awake, when he is"

"Russian police. Stern, stern but fair"

"Latvia gangsters. cool. I want to join them."

"I gotta come to term with my sexuality. I gotta know what I'm all about."

"My job on this show is to be naked, not kill myself.""

"Baby's cold."

"Fire doesn't burn if you're already dead!""

"From my experiments with sexiness, seems like a lot of people are afraid at first, and fear usually equals violence. But eventually I'll win their hearts and instead of fighting they'll want to make love to me."

"Sir, could I trouble you for a kiss?"

"You're not even Mexican!"

"That guy right there is the best damn roller skater ever. Maybe even in the whole town."

"I'm not into bestiality, but that's a good-looking animal."

"That's not Christian!"

"Steve-O, I don't like the man... he lost!"

"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? … It’s just not right. It’s not right. It’s not, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll, we’ll get our justice … Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to work it out."

"It made me feel like I was back in slavery days."

"You know, before when (the police went) to work, they used to be like, 'I'm gonna kick somebody's ass today and so I hope I can catch somebody in a bad situation or breaking the law, because I'm gonna beat someone's ass in a big way, I think that attitude has changed."

"Saying "yes" for fear of saying "no" is a recipe for resentment."

"Whatever forms your resentments may take, they wreck only you, not the one you resent."

"Nothing in the universe can hold down that rare individual who clearly realizes that he or she dosen't know what's in the way of his or her happiness, but who is willing to find out."

"The way you answer life's events, and what you experience as your life, are really one."

"Let's look at ten small places in our lives where we are trying to do the impossible and where, as a result of our misunderstanding, we are still sowing and reaping the harvest of frustration and headache:"

"Our Real Self is a ceaseless, ever-changing, and vital expression of eternal energies, even though this timeless nature remains veiled from us because of our present level of consciousness."

"We are the subject of all that we have yet to realize, and the object of all that we have realized."

"What we find in life is based on where we put our attention. When we focus on the small worlds our thoughts create, we miss out on the beauty and possibilities we are meant to enjoy."

"An unattended mind is the breeding ground of self defeat."

"Consciously giving up the last word is a secret prayer because the you that wants the last word isn't really you at all...it's that dark spirit of one-upmanship, that dark spirit of combativeness."

"No man is powerful as long as power is his need."

"Why do you want the approval of others who don't even approve of themselves?"

"It's impossible to discover who you really are if you limit what you are willing to find out about yourself to only what you want to know."

"Real compassion lies within our ability to remember that an angry, vengeful or hateful person is usually just someone who can no longer bear the weary weight of his or her own carefully concealed despair."

"There is no natural place inside of a human being for negative states. None. So if you're negative, frightened, worried, anxious, fearful, it's because you have bought into the work of the image, who shows you what it needs to show you so that you can be the person who now has to hate your condition."

"We are not here to learn to play, we are here to play to learn."

"...and for human beings on this planet it isn't wisdom that guides, it's wants."

"A prisoner mentality is anything that blames anything outside of you for the pain you have."

"You are going to have to struggle with something that you have never struggled with before. I am talking to you about it now. I am talking to you about the fact that your whole life to date has been in an effort to control what you see as being finite. The whole of life for human beings, predicated on the idea that one must acquire power in order to overpower conditions that will not give them what they say they need in order to have a fixed sense of security and well-being."

"Do you know what a good life is? A good life is a life in which you never have to think about yourself again. You know why? Because you can't think about yourself without producing fear."

"Every wall that I run in to is what I have yet to understand about myself and this life, and there is no other wall, none."

"Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality."

"The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory reasons: a] he constantly proclaims belief in human equality, but they don't; b] he has a high IQ, but they don't."

""Racism" is to the current era what "unAmericanism" was to the Fifties: a curse word that provides a handy substitute for logical thought."

"Black-white economic inequality is not a problem that America is going to be able to solve any time soon. But, due to our market-dominant majority, our country is rich enough to live with it. In contrast, if our current mass immigration system is allowed to continue, America will become just another country with a market dominant minority. Through government policy, we will have inflicted upon ourselves the kind of ugly society seen in most of the rest of the world."

"America tried to import the two fundamentals of the Swedish welfare state—high welfare payments and an end to social disapproval of illegitimacy—beginning about 1961. In parts of the U.S., such as heavily Scandinavian Minnesota, this worked reasonably well. But American voters were confronted with stunning speed with the realization that African-Americans responded differently than Swedes did to the new incentive structures. Welfare allowed much of African-American society to revert to African-style family structures."

"In parts of the country where it is economical to buy a house with a yard in a neighborhood with a decent public school, you'll generally find more Republicans. You'll find less in regions where it's expensive. It's a stereotype that a mortgage, marriage, and babies tend to make people more conservative. But it's a true stereotype. That's why it's in the GOP's self-interest to pursue policies that keep demand for housing down (such as limiting immigration) and the quality of public schooling up (such as, well, limiting immigration). The culture wars between Red States and Blue States (i.e Conservative and Liberal, in the perverse contemporary parlance) are driven in large part by objective differences in how family-friendly they are, financially speaking."

"We’ve now achieved the worst of both worlds: the educational authorities are committed to anti-male social constructionist ideology, but the pop culture market delivers the crudest, most sexualized imagery. The irony is that when the adult world imposes gender egalitarianism on young people in the name of progressive ideologies, it just makes the young people even more cognizant of their primordial differences."

"Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as "Darwin's Rottweiler," is self-defeating."

"What you won't hear, except from me, is that 'Let the good times roll' is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society. … In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, [the] Japanese aren't blacks."

"Immigration policy, by its very nature, is about discriminating, about selecting whom we should admit and whom we should keep out. It is one of the fundamental responsibilities of our elected representatives because if they don’t decide, inevitably some private interest is going to decide who gets in."

"Just as the managers of a public company have a responsibility to the existing stockholders not to diminish the value of their shares by selling new ones too cheaply to outsiders, our politicians have a moral obligation to the current citizens and their descendents to preserve the scarcity value of their right to live in America."

"Perhaps the most quoted social philosopher of our time famously asked:"

"The Administration and its media shills remain committed to their Grand Strategy of Invade the World - Invite the World. Bomb them over there and indulge them over here. Obviously, when you stop and think about it, that makes no sense whatsoever."

"It becoming ever more clear that the combination of racial gaps in IQ and the IQ taboo acts as a black hole that sucks all the intelligence out of an institution. Racial gaps in achievement are the overwhelmingly dominant fact driving school performance, for instance, but nobody is allowed to mention the IQ gap among the races, so misbegotten nonsense rushes in."

"Besides the multiculturalist and the assimilationist, there's a third position that isn't often invited to the immigration debate: the skeptical realist. On the rare occasions when they are mentioned in polite society, immigration skeptics are dismissed as "extremists"."

"As the empirical case for mass immigration has become less plausible, its advocates have increasingly switched to emphasizing their moral superiority: they don't look out for the general welfare of their fellow citizens, so that makes them better than their fellow citizens."

"In the West, we have easier ways now to make a killing than killing. If Sir Francis Drake, the great admiral-pirate of Elizabethan England, were a young man today, would he emigrate to Somalia to get a start in the piracy industry? Of course not. He’d apply for a job at Goldman Sachs."

"If somebody invented a magic bullet tomorrow that would somehow eliminate racial IQ disparities among all babies born from now on, measurable (though diminishing) gaps in the total population would still exist until everybody alive today is dead in the 22nd century."

"If you analyze a host of real world outcomes using adoption studies, fraternal v. identical twin studies, twins-raised-apart studies, the history of early childhood intervention research, naturally-occurring experiments, differences between societies, changes over history, and so forth, you tend to come up with nature and nurture as being about equally important: maybe fifty-fifty. The glass is roughly half-full and half-empty."

"Political correctness is a war on noticing."

"Privilege is basically a form of property, and as John Locke pointed out, property is what makes a civilization rather than a Libyan war zone of Hobbesian anarchy. The world is a better place when people can work constructively to earn privileges, individual and collective, and pass some of them on to their heirs."

"To be preyed upon by those stronger than you is bad enough; but to allow your artists and children to be slaughtered and defiled by barely organized foreigners who could be kept out by simple acts of national self-respect is far more shameful."

"The governments of Europe are confronting an epochal choice in the Mediterranean. Do they allow Europe to remain on course toward inundation by the African population explosion, inevitably turning Florence into Ferguson and Barcelona into Baltimore?"

"Now, you might think that when the old majority becomes a minority, it would then get minority rights. But that’s not how it works. Whites can’t become a certified minority; they will always be the legacy majority. The closer we get to the future when whites are a minority, the more we hear about their ancestors’ sins, their ineradicable hereditary guilt, their corruption of blood."

"One lesson of Irish history might be that it’s better to tolerate your annoying neighbors rather than bring in people from beyond the seas to help you win your petty domestic disputes."

"The logic of concentricism is so obvious that it’s almost never articulated anymore. If you look at people in Peru, Manchuria, or Chad, you’ll notice that they tend to feel the most duties and allegiances toward those whom they consider most like themselves, moderate amounts toward those moderately close to them, and so forth outward and onward. Instead, we now celebrate the anti-logic of leapfrogging loyalties. The Western liberal is noteworthy for feeling loyalty toward his inner circle, then leapfrogging over a whole bunch of folks who are kind of like him but whom he more or less despises, in order to embrace The Other."

"Much of the class hatred in America stems from the suspicions of the intelligentsia that plumbers and mechanics are using their voodoo cognitive ability of staring at 3-D physical objects and somehow understanding why they are broken to overcharge them for repairs. Thus it’s only fair, America’s white-collar managers assume, that they export factory jobs to lower-paid China so that they can afford to throw manufactured junk away when it breaks and buy new junk rather than have to subject themselves to the humiliation of admitting to educationally inferior American repairmen that they don’t understand what is wrong with their own gizmos."

"The progressive stack is basically a measure of how much you aren’t like, say, James Watt, the developer of the modern steam engine, the key invention of the Industrial Revolution. Watt was white, male, Protestant, straight, rich, mechanically skilled, and a scientific genius, so you’d better not be."

"It’s hard to notice dogs that don’t bark, so let me belabor this point a bit. You don’t see Harvard geneticist David Reich announcing that, say, unbeknownst to all previous observers, it turns out that the closest living relations to Samoans are actually Mohawks and Basques, while Tongans are most closely linked to Inuit, Samaritans, and Khoisan. Instead, what is found over and over is that the old anthropologists going all the way back to Linnaeus and Blumenbach in the 18th century tended to arrive at fairly reasonable frameworks for how the human races’ ancestral diversity could be conceptually organized. Lately, there have been interesting discoveries about the deep history of current populations, but few if any shockers about today’s races. Why? Because what we can see is the product of the genes we can’t see. So the arrival of genome sequencing primarily just confirmed what sharp-eyed observers had already noticed about who is related to whom."

"Human beings have always concocted rationalizations for why they deserve privilege. For most of history, a common explanation of why you should be privileged was that your ancestors were warriors and conquerors who had defeated their foes. In 21st-century America, however, the new fashion for asserting your claim to privilege is that you come from a long line of victims and losers. By intention, this leaves white Americans, the descendants of the men who won The Big One and went to the Moon, psychically dispossessed in their own native land."

"I never understood how globalism was supposed to supplant nationalism in the real world because global institutions don’t have many guns. As Stalin cynically asked about a globalist rival of his: “How many divisions does the Pope have?” As we’ve been seeing in recent months, the world ultimately is still organized into territorial states."

"I am uncertain from where comes Twitter’s weirdly Stalinist angle of insisting you show your guilt by deleting your own tweets. Possibly it has to do with Twitter’s legal insistence that you own your own tweets (but you just can’t do anything with them if Twitter decides it doesn’t like you). Hence, Twitter isn’t hitting you, you’re hitting yourself."

"My approach in explaining human society has been to follow the general line of Occam’s Razor that “It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer,” or that the simplest feasible explanation is less likely to be contrived for political purposes than a more complicated Occam’s Butterknife rationalization. And as more data continues to accumulate over the decades, my depiction of the way the world works seems to have a better track record than more fashionable theories."

"To climb the career ladder in modern America, you are expected to lie: about race, about crime, about men in dresses."

"Do American leaders still believe that they have the moral right to protect the territory of the American people by force? Or will we unilaterally disarm in the Scramble for America?"

"The Democrats’ master plan is simple: to be the Party of Diversity, with “diversity” defined elastically as being the opposite of a core American. And who is a “core American,” you ask? Well, the more you have in common demographically with George Washington or Ben Franklin, the more of a core American you are, and thus the Bad Guy."

"That diversity is divisive is also a major internal problem for the Democrats. How can they keep their coalition of the margins from turning into a circular firing squad with, say, the fanatical Muslims and gay Jews at each other’s throats? The obvious answer to Democrats has been by giving the fringes of American society a common enemy to hate, fear, and dispossess: core Americans. But this reflex is premised on core Americans being too obtuse to notice, or too polite to mention, all the blood libels being circulated about them. Moreover, the Democrats have set off a Darwinian struggle among their coalition of the fringes to be the top dogs of diversity."

"That which goes unsaid eventually goes unthought."

"One fundamental problem is that widely appealing conspiracy theories demand formidable villains, bad guys who can keep a secret and who adroitly understand how the world works in order to seize the future. But our elites instead seem inept at understanding cause and effect. They are recurrently surprised that, for example, their depolicing drives lead to an explosion of riots, murders, and car crashes."

"If the Associated Press and the like suddenly changing the rules of capitalization to make clear who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys seems childish, well, it is childish. And that’s a key point to understanding the development of anti-whiteism. Wokeness is a puerile, lowbrow, greed-driven, racist tantrum."

"Surely all Americans have the right to give their money only to those causes which they support. But what kind of society has this created? A society where the ignorant reign. A society where enlightened must hold their tongues. A nation whose politicians must profess half-hearted devotion to an ancient fable or face the disastrous consequences of speaking their true mind."

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence their [sic] is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

"You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only of principaly [sic] from human relation[ships]. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living."

"Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me Wayne. Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory, but I finally got here. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know your [sic] a great man. I now walk into the wild. Alex."

"Two Years He Walks The Earth. No Phone, No Pool, No Pets, No Cigarettes. Ultimate Freedom. An Extremist. An Aesthetic Voyager Whose Home Is The Road. Escaped From Atlanta. Thou Shalt Not Return, Cause "The West Is The Best." And Now After Two Rambling Years Comes The Final And Greatest Adventure. The Climactic Battle To Kill The False Being Within And Victoriously Conclude The Spiritual Revolution! Ten Days + Nights Of Freight Trains And Hitchhiking Bring Him To The Great White North. No Longer To Be Poisoned By Civilization He Flees, And Walks Alone Upon The Land To Become Lost In The Wild [double underline under "Wild"]. Alexander Supertramp May 1992."

"ATTENTION POSSIBLE VISITORS. S. O.. S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE [double underline]. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, CHRIS McCANDLESS. AUGUST ?Mary Ellen Barnes (ed.). Back to the Wild (2nd ed.). Twin Star Press, 2013. . (pp. 234-241)"

"BEAUTIFUL BLUEBERRIES."

"I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS All!"

"HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED."

"Dartmouth is the place I’ve devoted my life to, so it’s very sad to see this kind of decline in the intellectual strength of the institution."

"Nowadays, all students have access to and indeed most own computers and are comfortable with the software used to compose music. There are probably too many musical options for them now and the trick is to limit the number of musical ideas so as to develop structure and continuity in their work."

"The pressure to give A grades is intense. It comes from the students and increasingly from their parents as well."

"If you think this was an isolated incident, let me paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemoller, "First they came for the music faculty and I did not speak out because I was not a musician. Then they came for the psychologists and I did not speak out because I was not a psychologist. Then they came for the biologists and I did not speak out because I was not a biologist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.""

"When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen. So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion — because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do."

"It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission. It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed training for your mission. So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight. Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight."

"It's easy to sleep floating around — it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody or something!"

"The view of Earth is spectacular. The shuttle is pretty close to Earth. It only flies between 200 and 350 miles above Earth. So it's really pretty close. So we don't see the whole planet, like the astronauts who went to the moon did. So we can see much more detail. We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form. It's just a lot of fun and very interesting to look out the window."

"When you're on Earth, if you go to the top of a mountain, the stars look much brighter than they do at sea level. And because the space shuttle is above Earth's atmosphere, it's like being on a very, very high mountain. So they look brighter, but not bigger."

"There might be very primitive life in our solar system — single-cell animals, that sort of thing. We may know the answer to that in five or ten years. There is very likely to be life in other solar systems, in planets around other stars. But we won't know about that for a long time."

"In his 1930 book, Dirac took for granted that measurements could be made, but was very vague about what was actually involved."

"Neither Dirac nor von Neumann discussed his measurements in physical terms."

"At the first of the 1960's Rochester Coherence Conferences, I suggested that a license be required for use of the word photon, and offered to give such license to properly qualified people."

"I liked quantum mechanics very much. The subject was hard to understand but easy to apply to a large number of interesting problems."

"In fact, there really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out."

"A rare theorist turned experimentalist."

"A gifted experimentalist, and theoretician, in the best Newtonian tradition... His contributions to quantum measurements, and elucidative teachings on quantum mechanics, have not yet received the attention they deserve."

"Scientists need to exchange ideas in an informal place."

"The story of the brain's separation from the body begin with Rene Descartes. The most influential philosopher of the seventeenth century, Descartes divided being into two distinct substances: a holy soul and a mortal carcass. The soul was the source of reason, science, and everything nice. Our flesh, on the other hand, was "clock-like," just a machine that bleeds. With this schism, Descartes condemned the body to a life of subservience, a power plant for the brain's light bulbs."

"Neuroscience has contributed so much in just a few decades to how we think about human nature and how we know ourselves."

"After all, we're a brain embedded in this larger set of structures. You can call it culture, call it society, call it your family, call it your friend, call it whatever it is. It's the stuff that makes people sign onto their Facebook a thousand times a day. It's the reason Twitter exists. We have got all these systems now that really make us fully aware of just how important social interactions are to what it is to be human. The question is, how can we study that? Because that, in essence, is a huge part of what's actually driving these enzymatic pathways in your brain. What's triggering these synaptic transmissions and these squirts of neurotransmitter back and forth is thoughts of other people, what other people say to us, interacting with the world at large."

"We feel like more than just the sum of a trillion neurons. We feel like more than just three pounds of wet flesh, and so simply describing the brain in terms of its neurotransmitters and neurons and all these chemicals and exciting ingredients doesn't fully grapple with what it feels like to be human, the first person subjective experience of being a conscious being. When you think about the really grand epic questions of neuroscience … what is consciousness? How can we form a scientific explanation for consciousness, for human experience? That is the holy grail."

"As much as I loved the ideas, I excelled at experimental failure, I found new ways to make experiments not work. I would mess up PCRs, add the wrong buffers, northerns, westerns, southerns. I would make them not work in quite ingenious ways, and I realized slowly, over the course of those years, that the secret to being a great scientist is to love the manual labor of it."

"Simply translating the act of the scientist is the first job of any science writer. Then, in my more grandiose moments, the other big job of a science writer is to see connections, to see the forest composed by all these trees. The act of being a scientist, by definition, the act of being a modern scientist requires you to really focus. You have to drill down. You have to spend years studying one brick, one synaptic protein, one kind of thing that turns on the amygdala, one very particular question."

"So long as you live and in whatever circumstances the kaleidoscope of life may place you, think for yourself and act in accordance with the conclusions of that thinking; avoid so far as possible drifting with the current of the mob or being too easily influenced by the outward manifestation of things. Take your own look beneath the surface and don't trust others to look for you. If you will follow this rule consistently, I am sure you will keep out of much trouble, will make the most out of your life and, what is more, will contribute most of value to the community life."

"This is the sort of advice and counsel you might find yourself delivering one day to a future President or Secretary of Defense. When you do, make sure it your best, most independent military opinion—neither constrained nor contaminated by personal politics. Part of the deal we made when we joined up was to willingly subordinate our individual interests to the greater good of protecting national interests. The military as an institution must remain a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway. We give our best advice beforehand. If it's followed, great. If it's not, we have only two choices. Obey the orders we have been given, carrying them out with the professionalism and loyalty they deserve or vote with our feet. That's it. We don't get to debate those orders after the fact. We don't get to say, "Well, it's not how I would have done it," or "If only they had listened to ME." Too late at that point … and too cowardly. Few things are more damaging to our democracy than a military officer who doesn't have the moral courage to stand up for what's right or the moral fiber to step aside when circumstances dictate."

"There is, I am convinced, a sea of goodwill out in the country of people and places yearning to help. We need to tap into it. We need to make that connection. We need to come up with new ways and new ideas to make life better for those affected by this war, so that kids can go to school, incomes can be sustained, and homes can be both purchased and lived in for a long time. The truth is, we live in deeds, not days; in actions and thoughts and feelings, not heartbeats. If the untimely battlefield deaths of generations of American heroes have taught us nothing else, it should be this unalterable fact: what you do with your time here on earth is far more important than the time you had to do it. Those who live most are those who love most, who act the noblest and do their best."

"Let us all be men and women in full. Let us expect from ourselves more than we think we can give, more than we think we can do and more than we think we already know."

"We cannot kill our way to victory."

"If you listen closely to the voices of our veterans, you understand that yes, they all returned from war changed, but what never changed is this: They never forgot your generosity. They never forgot the power of opportunity. They never forgot the American dream. They want a job; they want their kids to go to school; they’d like an education, a career, a home. They want to make a difference. It is vital for communities throughout the land to be able to join up – in concert with DOD, VA – so that this dream is still possible for them – for those that sacrificed so much. But it goes far beyond what government can do. We must share the burdens of this war – now the longest conflict this nation has faced with an all-volunteer force since the American Revolution. I am convinced that America’s great sea of goodwill can be, in fact, a rising tide … a tide that could lift every veteran and every family of our wounded and fallen."

"It is a really important place to not go, if we can not go there in any way, shape or form."

"Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."

"Along with his congeniality, [he] displayed fine leadership qualities. With his well rounded personality, his enthusiasm, and his desire to do his best, Navy-Air is indeed getting an outstanding officer."

"In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened."

"The results were clear: the new environment inhibited recognition."

"To be cautious, one should not take high confidence as any absolute guarantee of anything."

"The problem is clear: the unreliability of eyewitness identification evidence poses one of the most serious problems in the administration of criminal justice and civil litigation."

"Even if it's going to be a harmful memory, they don't want to let it go. (This is) why sometimes I get such resistance to the work I do. Because it's telling people that your mind might be full of much more fiction than you realize. And people don't like that."

"Which would you rather have? A kid with obesity, heart problems, shortened lifespan, diabetes -- or maybe a little bit of false memory?"

"Memory works like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people."

"It is possible not to think about something for a long time, even something unpleasant that happened to you. But what's been claimed in these repressed-memory cases is something, by definition, that's too extreme to be explained by ordinary forgetting and remembering. They're saying that in order to go on in life, you had to wall off this memory, because it would be too painful to live with. Then finally you go into therapy and crack through the repression barrier and out comes this pristine memory. But there really is no credible scientific support for that notion."

"Therapists probably can't ethically do it, and they may have anti-deception provisions in their standards of conduct. But bad governments, bad people, they don't have requirements of conduct. When we recently published a study about planting false memories among U.S. soldiers, I was worried we were putting out a recipe for how you can do horrible things to somebody and then wipe their memory away."

"I collaborated on a brain imaging study in 2010, and the overwhelming conclusion we reached is that the neural patterns were very similar for true and false memories. We are a long way away from being able to look at somebody's brain activity and reliably classify an authentic memory versus one that arose through some other process."

"Wars fought exclusively on foreign soil do have marginally higher real output growth than peacetime periods, but real growth during all other wars is sharply below peacetime levels. Evidence for foreign and domestic wars is consistent with monetarist, fiscalist, and mixed theories of wartime booms."

"In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right."

"Through the lens of the Jock/Nerd Theory of History, the welfare state doesn’t look like a serious effort to "equalize outcomes." It looks more like a serious effort to block the "revenge of the nerds"—to keep them from using their financial success to unseat the jocks on every dimension of social status."

"Mussolini wasn’t just another socialist; he was the Lenin of Italy – the leader of the hard-line revolutionary faction. And Mussolini wasn’t just a “newspaperman”; he was the editor of Avanti!, the official newspaper of the Socialist Party."

"For socialists, of course, Mussolini’s apostasy proves nothing except his supreme evil. For everyone else, though, Mussolini’s origin story puts his subsequent career in a whole new light. Outsiders can easily see what insiders deny: The apostate fruit rarely falls far from the orthodox tree."

"Yes, Mussolini realized that socialism plus nationalism had more mass appeal than socialism alone. Yes, Mussolini realized that socialism would be stronger if it allied with the Church instead of destroying it. Yes, Mussolini realized that full-fledged mass expropriation of private property would devastate the economy. And yes, Mussolini realized that the word “socialism” alienated millions of Italians who would otherwise be receptive to his message. But this doesn’t make Mussolini a radical socialist who betrayed everything he believed in. It makes him a radical socialist who dropped some peripheral socialist dogmas that stood between him and absolute power. If he’d kept the socialist label and avoided alliance with Hitler, Mussolini might now be a left-wing icon as big as Che Guevara."

"Bioethics is to ethics as astrology is to astronomy."

"Personally, then I have no reason to lash out at the education system. Quite the contrary. Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, convince me that our education system is big waste of time and money. Almost every politician vows to spend more on education. As an insider, I can't help gasping, "Why? You want to waste even more?""

"Magic isn't real. There has to be a logical reason explanation for the effect of Ivory Tower achievement on Real World success. And here it is: despite the chasm between what students learn and what workers do, academic success is a strong signal of worker productivity. The labor market doesn't pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays for preexisting traits you reveal by mastering them."

"Statistical discrimination may be unfair and ugly, but it's hardly weird or implausible. Why is it any more weird or implausible to claim employers statistically discriminate on the basis of educational credentials?"

"I pretended to admire the tattoo in the shape of the Greek letter omega that covered her cheeks and forehead. It looked as if a dray horse had kicked her in the face."

"I don’t plan ever to get old. It’s unseemly."

"Lada saw me as a diamond-in-the-rough, begging for her lapidary attention. While I saw her as an ultimately inscrutable amalgam of love, sex, and money. It worked out about as well as you’d expect."

"This was unrecorded history, unhappening even as it happened."

"Thus it was not money but conscience that had propelled me on this journey. Conscience, that crabbed and ecclesiastical nag, which inevitably spoke, whether I heeded it or not, in a voice much like my mother’s."

"Strange, isn’t it, how people cling most desperately to a thing when it becomes least useful to them?"

"“You think Wexler is lying?” “I think he’s fallible,” Byron had replied."

"It was amazing how these events lost their impact, translated through the flat gaze of a video screen."

"He had come out of the war twice-decorated and with a thoughtful respect for the horrors of combat. He had seen terrible things, participated in terrible things...but that was the nature of war, and it was not something you could enter into halfway. War was a state of mind, war was all or nothing."

"There were times when his life had seemed to him like one prolonged act of sleepwalking."

"They allow us access to the experience of the past—the only kind of time machine we are ever likely to have."

"For them, the idea of forgetting was indistinguishable from the idea of death. To pass out of memory was to pass out of the world. To conserve memory was to confer immortality."

"The past was gone, the dead were dead and did not speak, and everybody dies; one day Oberg would be dead and silent, too, and that was as it should be: the broad and welcoming ocean of oblivion. It made life bearable. It was sacred. It should not be tampered with."

"He was not accustomed to thinking about these things so bluntly, but the facts were as obvious as they were painful."

"“There’s no forgiveness built into the system. I told Barbara so, dozens of times. She was always marching off to save the whales, save the trees, save some goddamn thing. It was endearing. But in the back of my head I always heard Dad’s voice: ‘This is only a holding action. Nothing is ever really saved.’ Barbara thought the greenhouse effect was like a virus, something you could stop if you came up with the right vaccine. I told her it was a cancer—the cancer of humanity on the vital organs of the earth. You can’t stop that by marching.” “Isn’t that a little like giving up?” “I think it’s called acceptance.” Archer stood and walked to the door, where his silhouette obscured the motion of the trees. “Very bleak attitude, Tom.” “Experience bears it out.”"

"“Must be a full moon,” she said.”Lawrence is turning into an asshole.”"

"Now as ever, he was startled by the wild exuberance of the twentieth century. All these lights! Colored neon and glaring filaments, powered, he had learned, but mechanical dams spanning rivers hundreds of miles away. And most of this—astonishingly—in the name of advertising."

"What was time, after all, except a lead-footed march from the precincts of youth into the country of the grave? Time was the force that crumbled granite, devoured memory, and seduced infants into senility—as implacable as a hanging judge and as poetic as a tank."

"“Time is a vastness,” he said finally. “We tend to underestimate it.”"

"Guilford thought he knew what science was. It was nothing more than curiosity...tempered by humility, disciplined with patience. Science meant looking—a special kind of looking. Looking especially hard at the things you didn’t understand. Looking at the stars, say, and not fearing them, not worshiping them, just asking questions, finding the question that would unlock the door to the next question and the question beyond that."

"A lot of people have made political careers out of religious piety and the fear of foreigners, but that won’t last. Not enough foreigners or miracles to sustain the crisis."

"After a gaudy sunset that land became an immense, limitless darkness. Too large, Guilford thought, too empty, and too plain a token of the indifferent machinery of God."

"I won’t put my ignorance on an altar and call it God."

"But really, who do you think we’re working for? Not some Sunday school god, not the proverbial loving shepherd. The shoving leopard, more like."

"He was as alone as he had ever been, frighteningly alone, in a borderless land of shaded forests and rocky, abyssal gorges. But that was all right. He didn’t much mind being alone. It was what happened when people were around that worried him."

"The essence of life is change, he said, and the essence of eternal life is eternal change."

"I gather we’re not the most craven species in the galaxy, but we’re not the most angelic by a long shot."

"“Maybe you were better off not knowing.” “Ignorance is not bliss.”"

"Last week the doctor at the Tilson Rural Clinic had shown him his X-rays, the too-easy-to-interpret shadows on his liver and lungs. Guilford had declined an offer of surgery and and last-gasp radiation therapy. This horse was too old to beat."

"He hated the idea of eulogizing himself. Some tasks are best left to others, surely including obituaries."

"That worries me. One death is attrition; two would look like incompetence—on someone’s part."

"“The planet doesn’t hate you,” Theo had once said. “But its intimacies are fatal.”"

"A broken human being isn’t even a good tool."

"Perfect aristocratic tone, Degrandpre thought: insult and menace in a single phrase."

"She understood too much. She understood that she had reached her destiny point, that time and the circumstances of her life had conspired to bring her to this place. For one ecstatic moment she was the axis on which the stars revolved."

"Zoe slowed but didn’t stop. She kept her hands in front of her, still a judicious distance from the animal. But close enough to smell it. Close enough to see the steam rising from its warm underbelly into the night air. Four billion years of un-Earthly evolution had shaped this aggregate of cells, this beast. She looked at it. And, amazingly, it looked at her. An impossible distance from the planet of her birth, this miracle had happened: Clay had made life. Life regarded life. First light, Zoe thought."

"Here was the real horror, Degrandpre thought, this breaking of barriers. Civilization, after all, was the making of divisions, of walls and fences to parse the chaotic wild into ordered cells of human imagination. Wilderness invades the garden and reason is overthrown."

"The awful thing about lying was that it became a habit, then a reflex, as automatic as the blinking of the eyes or the voiding of the bowels. Lying was the Terrestrial disease, his mother used to say."

"Life invented it first, Zoe thought, like so many other things. Like eyes: Turning photon impacts into neurochemical events with such subtlety that a frog can target a fly and a man can admire a rose."

"Ziegler said, “You know the story in the Bible, the story of Abraham and Isaac?” “Of course.” “God instructs Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice. Isaac makes it as far as the chopping block before God changes his mind.” Yes. Jacob had always imagined God a little appalled at Abraham’s willingness to cooperate. Ziegler said, “What’s the moral of the story?” “Faith.” “Hardly,” Ziegler said. “Faith has nothing to do with it. Abraham never doubted the existence of God—how could he? The evidence was ample. His virtue wasn’t faith, it was fealty. He was so simplemindedly loyal that he would commit even this awful, terrible act. He was the perfect foot soldier. The ideal pawn. Abraham’s lesson: fealty is rewarded. Not morality. The fable makes morality contingent. Don’t go around killing innocent people, that is, unless you're absolutely certain God want you to. It’s a lunatic’s credo. “Isaac, on the other hand, learns something much more interesting. He learns that neither God nor his own father can be trusted. Maybe it makes him a better man than Abraham. Suppose Isaac grows up and fathers a child of his own, and God approaches him and makes the same demand. One imagines Isaac saying, ’No. You can take him if you must, but I won’t slaughter my son for you.’ He’s not the good and faithful servant his father was. But he is, perhaps, a more wholesome human being.”"

"The attacking piece displaces its victim. The vanquished piece leaves the plane of the board entirely. But it does not, in a higher sense, cease to exist."

"To capture the pawn, threaten the queen."

"“Goddamn you,” Jacob said. “There’s no damnation, Jacob. No Heaven but the forest and no God but the hive.”"

"Ecstasy hates company."

"We contrast the urban and the natural, but that’s a contemporary myth. We’re animals, after all; our cities are organic products, fully as “natural” (whatever that word really means) as a termite hill or a rabbit warren. But how much more interesting: how much more complex, dressed in the intricacies and exfoliations of human culture, simple patterns iterated into infinite variation. And full of secrets, secrets beyond counting."

"You have a knack for turning your eyes inside out, so you see them. And they see you. And you're afraid, because they’re from the uncreated future, from a place, I think, where the human race has reached its last incarnation, from the end of the material world. Perhaps the end of all worlds. And they’re sad—melancholy is the better word—because you're like an angel to them, the angel of the past, the angel of infinite possibility. Possibility lost. The road not taken."

"One doesn’t have to understand in order to look. One has to look, in order to understand."

"I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid."

"Does it strike you, Mr. Keller, that we live every day in the science fiction of our youth?"

"Don’t despise life."

"“Ah, books.” Ziegler, smiling, came up behind me. “They bob like corks on an ocean. Float between worlds, messages in bottles.”"

"“Don’t tell me. It changed your life.” I was smiling. She smiled back. “It didn’t even change my mind.”"

"And death? I don’t fear death. I dread the absence of it."

"“Consciousness,” according to current scientific thought, was something the higher mammals had evolved in order to help them reproduce, much the way a garden slug secretes slime. It had no special ontological status. The “self” was a genetically modulated and biologically useful illusion."

"The Mysteries are the Mysteries, and ultimately personal—maybe the most personal thing in the universe. Evangelism, in my opinion, is a failure of the imagination. Beware of prophets: the best visions are the ones they leave in the desert."

"Kait was immediately bored. Children Kaitlin’s age possess no context; one video event is much like another."

"Personally, I don’t believe in anything more supernatural than what you read about in the Bible, and I only believe that one day out of seven."

"Try to imagine that Minkowski cube, Ray said, as a block of liquid water freezing (as contrary as this seems) from the bottom up. The progression of the freeze represents at least our human experience of the march of time. What is frozen is past, immutable, changeless. What is liquid is future, indeterminate, uncertain. We live on the crystallizing boundary."

"Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that’s why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit."

"The most fundamental parental urge is the urge to nurture and protect. To grieve for a child is to admit ultimate impotence. You can’t protect what goes into the ground. You can’t tuck a blanket around a grave."

"I suppose every decade gets the music it deserves."

"I suppose he could have said this more gently, but what would be the point?"

"Sometimes the conscience makes demands that are non-negotiable. Courage has nothing to do with it. We weren’t here because we were brave. We were here because we had to be here."

"There’s no point living if you can’t, at least occasionally, live."

"When does loyalty become martyrdom?"

"It was possible at last to hear the silence—to appreciate that there was a silence, deep and potent, out there beyond the pretension of the light."

"I want them not to forget. Which is, I suppose, what all aged veterans want. But they’ll forget. Of course they will. And their children will know less of us than they do, and their children’s children will find us barely imaginable. Which is as it should be. You can’t stop time."

"Times like this, with the wind moving the grass and curling around her like a huge cool hand, Tess felt the world as a second presence, as another person, as if the wind and the grass had voices of their own and she could hear them talking."

"If you understood the facts they needed no embroidery: all the wonder was already there, the more spellbinding because it was true."

"Nobody wants to conduct an autopsy on a dead saint."

"Promises were like bad checks, easy to write and hard to cash."

"“Wow,” Sue said. “You actually stole this?” “We don’t use that word,” Elaine told her. “Chris has an unnamed high-level source.”"

"His heart was in the right place. He wanted a religion that could plausibly comfort widows and orphans without committing them to patriarchy, intolerance, fundamentalism, or weird dietary laws. He wanted a religion that wasn’t in a perpetual fistfight with modern cosmology."

"We live in an enlightened age, however, an age that has learned to see and to value other living things as they are, not as we wish them to be. And the long and creditable history of science has taught us, if nothing else, to look carefully before we judge—to judge, if we must, based on what we see, not what we would prefer to believe."

"Understanding is better than ignorance. Ignorance, unlike life, unlike narrative, is static. Understanding implies a forward motion, thus the possibility of change."

"This would have been less annoying had it been untrue."

"His fertility cycles meant little to him. In his lifetime, he knew, he might make only one or two real contributions to the City’s genetic continuity, his viral gametes combining with others in the bodies of the night feeders to become morphologically active. It was abstractly pleasing, though, to realize he had cast his own essence into the ocean of probability, where it might come floating back unknown to him, as a fresh citizen with new and unique ideas and odors."

"Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere."

"Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility."

"The world is what it is and won’t be bargained with."

"He’s exactly what she wants. He’s the last thing she needs."

"“We might have destroyed ourselves, but at least it would have been our own fault.” “Would it, though? Whose fault exactly? Yours? Mine? No, it would have been the result of several billion human beings making relatively innocuous choices: to have kids, drive a car to work, keep their job, solve the short-term problems first. When you reach the point at which even the most trivial acts are punishable by the death of the species, then obviously, obviously, you’re at a critical juncture, a different kind of point of no return.”"

"The suicidally disgruntled were legion, And their enemies included any and all Americans, Brits, Canadians, Danes, et cetera; or, conversely, all Moslems, dark-skinned people, non-English-speakers, immigrants; all Catholics, fundamentalists, atheists; all liberals, all conservatives...For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape."

"It was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel’s ass."

"I don’t believe money is evil, but it can be terribly corrosive."

"I loved Molly. Or at least I told myself I did. Or, if what I felt for her was not love, it was at least a plausible imitation, a convincing substitute."

"An honest book is almost as good as a friend."

"He rolled his eyes. “Those are things people say, Tyler. Talking about multilateralism and diplomacy is like saying ‘I love you’—it serves to facilitate the fucking."

"All the brands and flavors of Big Salvation. At the last minute we would devise a technological fix and save ourselves. Or: the Hypotheticals were benevolent beings who would turn the planet into a peaceable kingdom. Or: God would rescue us all, or at least the true believers among us. Or. Or. Or. Big Salvation. It was a honeyed lie. A paper lifeboat, even if we were killing ourselves trying to cling to it. It wasn’t the Spin that had mutilated my generation. It was the lure and price of Big Salvation."

"“When was it obvious she was ill?” “Weeks ago. Or maybe—looking back on it—well—months.” “Has she had any kind of medical attention?” Pause. “Simon?” “No.” “Why not?” “It didn’t seem necessary.” “It didn’t seem necessary?” “Pastor Dan wouldn’t allow it.” I thought: And did you tell Pastor Dan to go fuck himself?"

"His eyes were closed, shut tight on whatever battle his common sense was conducting with his faith."

"“It never fails to astonish me,” Carol said. “The tenacity of love.”"

"Don’t be upset. The world is full of surprises. We’re all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we’re seldom formally introduced."

"We’ll do what life always does—defy expectations."

"“You learning anything from this?” Tyrell asked. Turk stood up and brushed his hands. “Yeah. I'm learning that I know even less than I thought I did.”"

"[There was] only one news channel, overseen by a bland and complexly multicultural board of advisors. It broadcast in fifteen languages and was, as a rule, interesting in none of them."

"There’s no drug that’ll make a stupid man smart."

"Fortune had done him few favors in the past, and he wasn’t sure he trusted it."

"What we cannot remember, we must rediscover."

"Average people seldom talked about anything interesting and often hurt each other savagely."

"The village muezzin called the faithful to prayer. Diane ignored the sound."

"We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father’s unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars."

"I believed there were no Hypotheticals in the sense of consciously acting agents—conscious entities. There was only the process. The needles of evolution, endlessly knitting."

"These movies belonged to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—that period of great, unsustainable, and hedonistic prosperity, driven by the burning of Earth’s reserves of perishable oil, which culminated in the False Tribulation, and the wars, and the plagues, and the painful dwindling of inflated populations to more reasonable numbers."

"You must not make the mistake of thinking that because nothing lasts, nothing matters."

"Evolution can’t be predicted, Julian used to tell me; it’s a scattershot business; it fires, but it doesn’t aim."

"The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it—well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn’t be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose."

"To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one’s fellow man—even a fellow man striving to do the same to you—creates what might be called an unassimilable memory: a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was."

"Julian read the Bible as if it were a work of contemporary fiction, open to criticism or even revision. Once, when I queried him about the purpose of his unusual reinterpretations, he said to me, “I want a better Bible, Adam. I want a Bible in which the Fruit of Knowledge contains the Seeds of Wisdom, and makes life more pleasurable for mankind, not worse. I want a Bible in which Isaac leaps up from the sacrificial stone and chokes the life out of Abraham, to punish him for the abject and bloody sin of Obedience. I want a Bible in which Lazarus is dead and stubborn about it, rather than standing to attention at the beck and call of every passing Messiah.”"

"The rooms were confining, the windows minuscule, the ceilings perilously low. She could not have spent much money on the furnishings, which were shabby, threadbare, nicked, and splintered—I had seen better furniture abandoned at Montreal curbsides. But if her book-cases were humble, they were bowed under the weight of surprisingly many books—almost as many as there had been in the library of the Duncan and Crowley Estate back in Williams Ford. It seemed to me a treasure more estimable than any fine sofa or plush footstool, and worth all the rough economies surrounding it."

"“Truth is a perilous commodity,” Julian admitted, “but so is ignorance, Adam—more so.”"

"If I am an agnostic, Calyxa, it’s because I'm also a realist."

"I would confront the thieves, I thought, and the self-evident justice of my case would cause them to crumble before me. I don't know why I expected such extravagant results from the application of mere justice. That kind of calculation is seldom borne out by worldly events."

"I suppose the pursuit of fashion has always carried a price, monetary or otherwise."

"“Perpetual peace is a dream,” he said, “as much as we may yearn for it—but war! War is an integral part of God’s ordering of the universe, without which the world would be swamped in selfishness and materialism. War is the very vessel of honor, and who of us could endure a world without the divine folly of honor? That faith is especially true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause he little understands, during a campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use. On the field of battle, where a man lives or dies by the caprice of a bullet or the verdict of a bayonet, life is at its best and healthiest.”"

"“Bloody indeed,” the President said. “But we’re not a nation that flinches at blood, nor are we a people constrained by feminine delicacy. To us all is permitted—even cruelty, yes, even ruthlessness—for we’re the first in the world to raise the sword not in the name of enslaving and oppressing anyone, but in the name of freeing them from bondage. We must not be miserly with blood! Let there be blood, if blood alone can drown the old secular world. Let there be pain, and let there be death, if pain and death will save us from the twin tyrannies of Atheism and Europe.”"

"Since Deacon Hollingshead’s arrival in town last July the Dominion had been hard at work, cleansing New York City of moral corruption. “Corruption” is a popular word with the enthusiasts of the Dominion, usually uttered as a prelude to the knife, the docket, or the noose."

"Later Julian would give me another book he had culled from among the Archival duplicates, a short novel called The Time Machine by Mr. H. G. Wells, about a marvelous but apparently imaginary cart which carried a man into the future—and it fascinated me—but the Archive itself was a Time Machine in everything but name. Here were voices preserved on browning paper like pressed flowers, whispering apostasies into the ear of a new century."

"“But you're a Philosopher!” Julian exclaimed at one point. “This is Philosophy, not Religion, since you rule out supernatural beings—you know that as well as I do!” “I suppose it is Philosophy, looked at from one angle,” Stepney conceded. “But there’s no money in Philosophy, Julian. Religion is far more lucrative as a career.”"

"A man who submits himself wholeheartedly to God might handle them and not be harmed. That was the faith my father had professed. Certainly he trusted God, in his own case, and believed God manifested Himself in the rolled eyes of his congregants and in their babble of incomprehensible tongues. Trust and be saved, was his philosophy. And yet in the end it was the snakes that killed him. I wondered which element of the calculation had ultimately failed him—human faith or divine patience."

"You never stop being a parent, Adam, no matter how old or wise your child becomes—you'll see."

"Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?"

"Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don’t need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion."

"“Sometimes he wears the crown,” Magnus Stepney once remarked, “and sometimes, by the grace of God, he takes the damned thing off.”"

"Some pious men may find this truth unorthodox and bitter: But Nature, Chance, and Time ensure survival of the fitter!"

"Deacon Hollingshead: “The history of the world is written in Scripture, and it ends in a Kingdom.” Julian Comstock: “The history of the world is written in sand, and it evolves as the wind blows.”"

"The afternoon is too tempting to be denied. It isn’t Paradise here, or even close, but the mimosa is in bloom and the air from the sea is cool and pleasant. On days like this I think of poor old Magnus Stepney’s evolving Green God, harking us all up to Eden. The Green God’s voice is faint enough that few of us hear it clearly, and that’s our tragedy, I suppose, as a species—but I hear it very distinctly just now. It asks me to step into the sunshine, and I mean to do its bidding."

"Sandra had spent her days rendering pass/fail verdicts over troubled minds, applying tests most functional adults easily passed. Is the subject oriented to time and place? Does the subject understand the consequences of his actions? But if she could give the same test to humanity as a whole, Sandra thought, the outcome would be very much in doubt. Subject is confused and often self-destructive. Subject pursues short-term gratification at the expense of his own well-being."

"Some things are taken away from you, some you leave behind—and some you carry with you, world without end."

"She gave me a disdainful look. “Please don’t make facile judgments about things you don’t understand.”"

"To whom had he retailed his conscience, Sandra wondered, and what was the going price these days?"

"It was sad but completely understandable. Ten billion human beings without any cortical or limbic augmentation had simply acted to maximize their individual well-being. They hadn’t given much thought to long-term consequences, but how could they? They had no reliable mechanism by which they could think or act collectively. Blaming those people for the death of the ecosphere made as much sense as blaming water molecules for a tsunami."

"The problem was the Voxish prophecies. Our founders had written them into the Coryphaeus as unalterable axioms—embedded truths, permanently exempt from debate or revision. That hadn’t mattered when the rapture of the Hypotheticals was a distant goal toward which we moved in gradual increments. But now we had come to the blunt end of the question. Prophecy had collided with reality, and the obvious inference—that the prophecies might have been mistaken—was a possibility the Coryphaeus was forbidden to consider."

"What had been released into the desert vacuum and starry oases of the galaxy was the inexorable logic of reproduction and natural selection. What followed was parasitism, predation, symbiosis, interdependency—chaos, complexity, life."

"From this new point of view, the universe I had inhabited became an object I could perceive in its entirety. It was a hypersphere embedded in a cloud of alternative states—the sum of all possible quantum trajectories from the big bang to the decay of matter. “Reality”—history as we had known or inferred it—was only the most likely of these possible trajectories. There were countless others, real in a different sense: a vast but finite set of paths not taken, a ghostly forest of quantum alternatives, the shores of an unknown sea."

"What is inevitable is not death but change. Change is the only abiding reality. The metaverse evolves, fractally and forever. Saints become sinners, sinners become saints. Dust becomes men, men become gods, gods become dust."

"There was no mind in back of those words, Ethan reminded himself. Nothing but a series of highly-evolved algorithms aimed as achieving a strategic result. Engaging in dialogue with such a creature was no more useful than trying to fend off a scorpion by quoting Voltaire."

"And the hypercolony would lie. More precisely, it would say whatever advanced its interests. The distinction between truth and falsehood was irrelevant to the hypercolony, perhaps even imperceptible to it. It generated human language solely for the purpose of manipulating human behavior."

"Ris, it can’t tell the truth—it can’t distinguish between truth and lies. You know that. It uses words to manipulate people."

"Cassie had seen pictures in textbooks, of ranks of men in brown uniforms with rifles slung over their shoulders: the Allied Expeditionary Force, off to join the battered Brits and French. And pictures of the muddy European trenches: Ypres, Passchendaele, the Marne, where countless young men had been slaughtered by other young men as bewildered and obedient as themselves."

"Reproduction, Nerissa thought: Ethan had once called it the blade of evolution. There was no intelligence in evolution, only the cutting-board logic of selective reproduction. She envisioned the work of evolution as a kind of blind, inarticulate poetry. We are the was it Charles Darwin had said? From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved…There is grandeur in this view of life. Grandeur or horror. The idea that all the kaleidoscopic strangeness of biological systems could unfold without guidance or motivation was almost too unsettling to accept."

"Life shites on hope."

"“So we can trust each other.” “It’s the rest of the world we can’t be sure about.”"

"“So are they some form of life, or are they machines?” “At the chemical level all living things can be construed as machines.”"

"“What are you saying, you think he’s completely sane?” “No. But I’m not sure any of us rises to that standard.”"

"All the pious high-school bullshit about the Century of Peace had been revealed for what it was: as artificial as a plastic nativity scene and as hollow as a split piñata. The world was peaceful the way a drunken coed passed out at a frat party was peaceful: it was the peace that facilitated the fucking."

"The only reason you can’t see how crazy this is is because we’ve been neck-deep in crazy for years."

"“Even if you could talk to it, you wouldn’t learn anything. All it would tell you is what it wanted you to hear. Or no, not even what it wants you to hear; it would generate words that in some kind of model of possible outcomes produce a result that enhances the likelihood of its reproductive success.” “I do that too,” Leo said. “From time to time.” Smiling. “Smartass,” Cassie said."

"And the question she found herself asking now that Leo was asleep beside her was: had she fallen in love? Because that was how it felt. But only a few minutes ago her body had exploded into an orgasm so intense that it probably registered on the Richter scale, so maybe her judgment wasn’t entirely unbiased."

"What is intelligence, exactly? Maybe that sounds like a simple question. We know—or think we know—what our own kind of intelligence is like. After all, we experience it on a daily basis. But there are other kinds of intelligence. There is the intelligence of the hive—the complex behavior that arises from individually unintelligent organisms following a few simple behavioral rules in response to cues from the environment. And there is a kind of intelligence that inheres in the ecosystem as a whole. Evolution, over time, has created entities as diverse as crinoids and mushrooms and harbor seals and howler monkeys, all without a predetermined goal and without devoting even a moment of thought to the subject. You might even conclude that this kind of thoughtless intelligence is more powerful and patient than our own."

"His sympathy (that is, for a caterpillar parasitized by a wasp) was an anthropomorphism, a projection. The caterpillar was hardly more than a protein engine enacting a suite of encoded behaviors. A meat robot. As am I, except that in the case of Ethan’s species evolution had conjured a knowing self out of chemistry and contingency. I feel, therefore I abhor."

"Violence is the great attractor of human history, Dr. Iverson. A force almost as irresistible as gravity."

"“Baumgartner’s coke habit isn’t the secret she thinks it is, and it gives us leverage.” “Coke?” “Coke, yeah, you know: cocaine. When she powders her nose, she literally powders her nose.”"

"Not all idealism is fake."

"“It’s complicated, Jesse. There’s the official story. There’s the real story. And there’s the conspiracy theory.” “Tell me the real story.” “I would, but I don’t know what it is.” “Well, then what’s the official story? And who declared it official?”"

"The conclusions seem inescapable that in certain circles a tendency has arisen to fear people who fear government. Government, as the Father of Our Country put it so well, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. People who understand history, especially the history of government, do well to fear it. For a people to express openly their fear of those of us who are afraid of tyranny is alarming. Fear of the state is in no sense subversive. It is, to the contrary, the healthiest political philosophy for a free people."

"Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them."

"The media insist that crime is the major concern of the American public today. In this connection they generally push the point that a disarmed society would be a crime-free society. They will not accept the truth that if you take all the guns off the street you still will have a crime problem, whereas if you take the criminals off the street you cannot have a gun problem."

"The 1911 pistol remains the service pistol of choice in the eyes of those who understand the problem. Back when we audited the FBI academy in 1947, I was told that I ought not to use my pistol in their training program because it was not fair. Maybe the first thing one should demand of his sidearm is that it be unfair."

"We remember the refrain from the Philippines: ‘Underneath the starry flag/Civilize him with a Krag /And then get underway for home sweet home.’ But you have to civilize him first, and how you do that with the ragheads is the problem."

"The decay of the late, great country of South Africa is beginning to become apparent. The name of the Transvaal has been officially changed to ‘Gauteng.’ (One of our friends has suggested that in view of this its inhabitants in the future should be referred to as Oranggautengs.) … And now there is a move afoot to wreck the Kruger National Park, one of the wonders of the world, on the notion that a good bit of its land was ‘taken from the blacks.’ This idea is somewhat akin to giving Yellowstone Park back to the Blackfeet."

"The Germans gathered together ethnic divisions from all over Europe in which men of the same linguistic and cultural background could serve together. The Georgian SS division conducted itself with distinction in normal military action, but a good many people seem to think that anybody who was ever a member of the SS was automatically a war criminal."

"The consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition."

"One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."

"In our most Puritan of society, gambling-like other pleasures-is either taxed, restricted to certain hours, or forbidden altogether. Yet the impulse to gamble remains an eternal aspect of the irrationality of man. It finds outlets in business, war, politics, in the formal overtures of the gambling casinos, and in the less ceremonious exchanges among individuals of differing opinions."

"Shortly after pithecanthropus erectus gained the ascendancy, he turned his attention to the higher-order abstractions."

""Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo" is a euphemism for closing a single gaming table. It was last accomplished at the Casino Ste. des Bains de Mer during the final days of 1957, with a harvest of 180 million francs."

"In general statistics can be considered as the offspring of the theory of probability, it builds on its parent and extends the area of patronymic jurisdiction."

"A proven theorem of game theory states that every game with complete information possesses a saddle point and therefore a solution."

"The essence of the phenomenon of gambling is decision making. The act of making a decision consists of selecting one course of action, or strategy, from among the set of admissible strategies."

"There are no conventional games involving conditions of uncertainty without risk."

"The French philosopher Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaïs (1766-1845) formalized the statement that good and evil fortune are exactly balanced in that they produce for each person an equivalent result."

"Generally, a betting system for which each wager depends only on present resources and present probability of success is known as a Markov betting system."

"Coin matching and finger flashing were among the first formal games to arise in the history of gambling. The class of Morra games extends back to the pre-Christian era, although not until comparatively recent times have game-theoretic solutions been derived."

"Against human opposition the machine usually emerges victorious, since individual patterns tend to be not random but a function of emotions and previous training and experience."

"While no rigorous proof of an optimal strategy has been achieved, Robbins has proposed the principal of "staying on a winner" and has shown it to be uniformly better than a strategy of random selection."

"The hope of a positive expected gain lies in detecting a wheel with sufficient bias."

"The first-known public lottery was sponsored by Augustus Caesar to raise funds for repairing the city of Rome; the first public lottery awarding money prizes, the Lotto de Firenze, was established in Florence in 1530."

"One of the oldest mythological fables tells of Mercury playing at dice with Selene and winning from her the five days of the epact (thus totaling the 365 days of the year and harmonizing the lunar and solar calendars)."

"Although the major gambling casinos do not maintain statistical records on the results of games of Craps, one event has been recorded-that wherein a young man achieved 28 consecutive "passes" at the Desert Inn Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada (June 10, 1950). Odds against such an event are 400 million to 1."

"In 1423, the Franciscan friar St. Bernardino of Siena preached a celebrated sermon against cards (Contra Alcarum Ludos) at Bologna, attributing their invention to the devil. Despite such ecclesiastic interdiction, Johannes Gutenberg printed playing cards the same year as his famous Bible (1440). The cards from Gutenberg's press were Tarot cards, from which the modern deck is derived."

"Blackjack does possess a memory (the interdependence of the cards) and a conscience (inferior play will inevitably be penalized) and is not democratic (the mental agility and retentiveness of the player are significant factors)."

"Because the fluctuations in the composition of the deck as it is dependent over successive (and dependent) trials, it is intuitively apparent that altering decisions or the magnitude of the wager or both in accordance with the fluctuations should prove advantageous to the player."

"Contract Bridge is likely the most challenging card game extant; it is certainly the the most obsessive for its ranks of zealous followers. The initial progenitor of all Bridge forms is the game of Triumph, which gained currency about A.D. 1500. In the mid seventeenth century, Triumph evolved into Whist, a partnership game for four players. The change from Whist to Bridge occurred about 1886with a publication in London of a small pamphlet, titled Biritch or Russian Whist."

"The earliest full-length account of a chariot race appears in Book xxiii of the Iliad."

"Treatment of the apparently whimsical fluctuations of the stock quotations as truly non stationary processes requires a model of such complexity that its practical value is likely to be limited. An additional complication, not encompassed by most stock market models, arises from the manifestation of the market as a nonzero sum game."

"Reflecting an amalgam of economics, monetary, and psychological factors, the stock market represents possibly the most subtly intricate game invented by man."

"A weakness of the random-walk model lies in its assumption of instantaneous adjustment, whereas the information impelling a stock market toward its "intrinsic value" gradually becomes disseminated throughout the market place."

"From a rational standpoint, it might be expected that man should be far more willing to express financial confidence in his skills rather than risking his earnings on the mindless meanderings of chance. Experience, however, has strongly indicated the reverse proposition to hold true."

"Anthropologists have often commented on the striking resemblance between the uneducated gambler and the primitive."

"The assumption that individuals act objectively in accordance with purely mathematical dictates to maximize their gain or utility cannot be sustained by empirical observation."

"Cruisin' down the street in my six-fo' jockin' da bitches slappin da hoes."

"Cause the boyz in da hood are always hard, Keep fuckin with us and we'll pull yo' card knowin nothin in life but to be legit don't quote me boy cause I said shit."

"Perched up high on a rooftop, like a bird I'm having evil thoughts, A black hood covers my face as death flows through my mind at its own pace."

"The boy had to pay the piper, so they all stay in fear of the neighborhood sniper"

"I'm constantly thinking melodies. Now, to add interest to those melodies, obviously you have to know what things can be superimposed over a chord, and I will think of extended arpeggios and the upper estensions. If I'm playing very vertically, I will invariably start to include certaing passing notes which imply certain scales -- like a melodic minor scale against a C minor chord, or diminished scales, something like that. But I'm not thinking of a scale at that specific moment. I'm thinking of the notes as surrounding that chord -- because I know how each of the twelve notes in music sound against a C minor seventh, for instance."

"Expensive firefighting equipment is rushed to the scene immediately on the sound of an alarm no matter what is on fire. Elaborate freeways in our metropolitan areas, costing many millions of dollars, are available to any motor vehicle. Microwave systems bring to ones television a program or view of an event taking place thousands of miles away. For the same few cents one can send a letter a short distance or across the continent."

"Yet another means by which to distribute more equally the wealth our people create is by an all-out program in the building of homes. Where did we ever get the idea that it is all right for some Canadian children to grow up in slums and others in mansions? If we can find the money - in other words, the raw materials and the men to do the work - to build skyscrapers and luxurious bank buildings in our large cities, if we can afford to maintain an elaborate defence establishment, if we can cope with the social costs that flow from life on the "other side of the tracks," we can well afford the expenditure of public money in programs designed to eliminate every last slum dwelling there is in this country, in programs designed to redevelop our communities, both urban and rural, toward the day when all our people will live in good homes."

"Ideas change the world, but they do it by assuming shape, they do it by taking concrete form."

"One of the facts of history is that battles do not stay won. Those that matter have to be waged again and again."

"The fearsome fact of our time is that other elements than the government have assumed the role of directing our affairs. To a very large extent the way we live and the things we live for are determined by the interests of powerful and monopolistic corporations"

"The kinds of homes or communities people live in, the resources available for health, education, and security in old age - all these things are subject to the decisions of rulers we do not elect."

"What shall it profit us to live in an affluent society if the things we produce and the ways in which we distribute them fail to contribute to the achievement of human dignity and social values?"

"Plan-less profit-seeking as practiced by the West cannot match the planned export policies of the East."

"All told it is a new world. It calls for new ideas. In Canada it calls for a New Party."

"Education is still starved. It is the cornerstone of any civilized society and the sharpest sword in the defence of freedom, but it is still the step child of governments and corporations alike."

"What shall it profit us, unless life in the midst of it all has meaning? When a society spends more on advertising than it does on education, where is it headed?"

"Workers do not try to prevent employers from making contributions to political parties the workers do not support."

"Always make those above you feel comfortably superior."

"Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction."

"Seduction is a game of psychology, not beauty, and it is within the grasp of any person to become a master at the game. All that is required is that you look at the world."

"Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic—it makes people come to you."

"In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine."

"Religion humanizes this universe, makes us feel important and loved. We are not animals governed by uncontrollable drives, animals that die for no apparent reason, but creatures made in the image of supreme being."

"Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger."

"According to Freud (who was speaking from experience, since he was his mother’s darling), spoiled children have a confidence that stays with them all their lives."

"At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it."

"Many men are intimidated by beauty and prefer to worship it from afar; others are drawn in, but not for the purpose of conversation. The Beauty suffers from isolation."

"People who are outwardly distant or shy are often better targets than extroverts. They are dying to be drawn out, and still waters run deep."

"Your targets cannot idealize you if they know too much about you, if they start to see you as all too human. Not only must you maintain a degree of distance, but there must be something fantastical and bewitching about you, sparking all kinds of delightful possibilities in their mind."

"Arrange an occasional “chance” encounter, as if you and your target were destined to become acquainted—nothing is more seductive than a sense of destiny. Lull the target into feeling secure, then strike."

"You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential."

"Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Our thoughts almost inevitably revolve around this desire; we simply recoil from entertaining ideas that are unpleasant or painful to us. We imagine we are looking for the truth, or being realistic, when in fact we are holding on to ideas that bring a release from tension and soothe our egos, make us feel superior. This pleasure principle in thinking is the source of all of our mental biases. If you believe that you are somehow immune to any of the following biases, it is simply an example of the pleasure principle in action. Instead, it is best to search and see how they continually operate inside you, as well as learn how to identify such irrationality in others."

"We all naturally possess the most remarkable tool for connecting to people and attaining social power—empathy. When cultivated and properly used, it can allow us to see into the moods and minds of others, giving us the power to anticipate people’s actions and gently lower their resistance. This instrument, however, is blunted by our habitual self-absorption. We are all narcissists, some deeper on the spectrum than others. Our mission in life is to come to terms with this self-love and learn how to turn our sensitivity outward, toward others, instead of inward. We must recognize at the same time the toxic narcissists among us before getting enmeshed in their dramas and poisoned by their envy."

"The first step, then, is the most important: to realize you have a remarkable social tool that you are not cultivating. The best way to see this is to try it out. Stop your incessant interior monologue and pay deeper attention to people. Attune yourself to the shifting moods of individuals and the group. Get a read on each person’s particular psychology and what motivates them. Try to take their perspective, enter their world and value system. You will suddenly become aware of an entire world of nonverbal behavior you never knew existed, as if your eyes could now suddenly see ultraviolet light. Once you sense this power, you will feel its importance and awaken to new social possibilities."

"People tend to wear the mask that shows them off in the best possible light—humble, confident, diligent. They say the right things, smile, and seem interested in our ideas. They learn to conceal their insecurities and envy. If we take this appearance for reality, we never really know their true feelings, and on occasion we are blindsided by their sudden resistance, hostility, and manipulative actions. Fortunately, the mask has cracks in it. People continually leak out their true feelings and unconscious desires in the nonverbal cues they cannot completely control—facial expressions, vocal inflections, tension in the body, and nervous gestures. You must master this language by transforming yourself into a superior reader of men and women. Armed with this knowledge, you can take the proper defensive measures. On the other hand, since appearances are what people judge you by, you must learn how to present the best front and play your role to maximum effect."

"Your task as a student of human nature is twofold: First, you must understand and accept the theatrical quality of life. You do not moralize and rail against the role-playing and the wearing of masks so essential to smooth social functioning. In fact, your goal is to play your part on the stage of life with consummate skill, attracting attention, dominating the limelight, and making yourself into a sympathetic hero or heroine. Second, you must not be naive and mistake people’s appearances for reality. You are not blinded by people’s acting skills. You transform yourself into a master decoder of their true feelings, working on your observation skills and practicing them as much as you can in daily life."

"In general, the best thing to do when you suspect people of trying to distract you from the truth is not to actively confront them in the beginning, but in fact to encourage them to continue by showing interest in what they are saying or doing. You want them to talk more, to reveal more signs of tension and contrivance. At the right moment you must surprise them with a question or remark that is designed to make them uncomfortable, revealing you are onto them. Pay attention to the microexpressions and body language they emit at such moments. If they are really deceiving, they will often have a freeze response as they take this in, and then quickly try to mask the underlying anxiety. This was the favorite strategy of detective Columbo in the television series of the same name—facing criminals who had tried to reverse engineer the evidence to make it look like someone else had done it, Columbo would pretend to be perfectly friendly and harmless but then would suddenly ask an uncomfortable question and then pay extra attention to the face and body."

"When choosing people to work and associate with, do not be mesmerized by their reputation or taken in by the surface image they try to project. Instead, train yourself to look deep within them and see their character. People’s character is formed in their earliest years and by their daily habits. It is what compels them to repeat certain actions in their lives and fall into negative patterns. Look closely at such patterns and remember that people never do something just once. They will inevitably repeat their behavior. Gauge the relative strength of their character by how well they handle adversity, their ability to adapt and work with other people, their patience and ability to learn. Always gravitate toward those who display signs of strength, and avoid the many toxic types out there. Know thoroughly your own character so you can break your compulsive patterns and take control of your destiny."

"The most significant indicator of people’s character comes through their actions over time. Despite what people say about the lessons they have learned (see Howard Hughes), and how they have changed over the years, you will inevitably notice the same actions and decisions repeating in the course of their life. In these decisions they reveal their character. You must take notice of any salient forms of behavior—disappearing when there is too much stress, not completing an important piece of work, turning suddenly belligerent when challenged, or, conversely, suddenly rising to the occasion when given responsibility. With this fixed in your mind, you do some research into their past. You look at other actions you have observed that fit into this pattern, now in retrospect. You pay close attention to what they do in the present. You see their actions not as isolated incidents but as parts of a compulsive pattern. If you ignore the pattern it is your own fault."

"Absence and presence have very primal effects upon us. Too much presence suffocates; a degree of absence spurs our interest. We are marked by the continual desire to possess what we do not have—the object projected by our fantasies. Learn to create some mystery around you, to use strategic absence to make people desire your return, to want to possess you. Dangle in front of others what they are missing most in life, what they are forbidden to have, and they will go crazy with desire. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Overcome this weakness in yourself by embracing your circumstances, your fate."

"People may point to all of this as evidence that we humans are becoming more honest and truthful, but human nature does not change within a few generations. People have become more obvious and forthright not out of some deep moral calling but out of increasing self-absorption and overall laziness. It requires no effort to simply be oneself or to blast one’s message. And the lack of effort simply results in a lack of effect on other people’s psychology. It means that people’s interest in you will be paper thin. Their attention will quickly move on and you will not see the reason for this. Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability. Go in the opposite direction. With so few people out there who understand the art of desirability, it affords you endless opportunities to shine and exploit people’s repressed fantasies."

"It is in the animal part of your nature to be most impressed by what you can see and hear in the present—the latest news reports and trends, the opinions and actions of the people around you, whatever seems the most dramatic. This is what makes you fall for alluring schemes that promise quick results and easy money. This is also what makes you overreact to present circumstances—becoming overly exhilarated or panicky as events turn one direction or the other. Learn to measure people by the narrowness or breadth of their vision; avoid entangling yourself with those who cannot see the consequences of their actions, who are in a continual reactive mode. They will infect you with this energy. Your eyes must be on the larger trends that govern events, on that which is not immediately visible. Never lose sight of your long-term goals. With an elevated perspective, you will have the patience and clarity to reach almost any objective."

"If possible, avoid deep contact with those whose time frame is narrow, who are in continual react mode, and strive to associate with those with an expanded awareness of time."

"Life is harsh and people competitive. We naturally must look after our own interests. We also want to feel that we are independent, doing our own bidding. That is why when others try to persuade or change us, we become defensive and resistant. To give in challenges our need to feel autonomous. That is why to get people to move from their defensive positions you must always make it seem like what they are doing is of their own free will. Creating a feeling of mutual warmth helps soften people’s resistance and makes them want to help. Never attack people for their beliefs or make them feel insecure about their intelligence or goodness—that will only strengthen their defensiveness and make your task impossible. Make them feel that by doing what you want they are being noble and altruistic—the ultimate lure. Learn to tame your own stubborn nature and free your mind from its defensive and closed positions, unleashing your creative powers."

"Creating this feeling of validation is the golden key that will unlock people’s defenses. And we cannot survive and thrive in this highly competitive world without possessing such a power."

"Each of us has a particular way of looking at the world, of interpreting events and the actions of people around us. This is our attitude, and it determines much of what happens to us in life. If our attitude is essentially fearful, we see the negative in every circumstance. We stop ourselves from taking chances. We blame others for mistakes and fail to learn from them. If we feel hostile or suspicious, we make others feel such emotions in our presence. We sabotage our career and relationships by unconsciously creating the circumstances we fear the most. The human attitude, however, is malleable. By making our attitude more positive, open, and tolerant of other people, we can spark a different dynamic—we can learn from adversity, create opportunities out of nothing, and draw people to us. We must explore the limits of our willpower and how far it can take us."

"We humans like to imagine that we have an objective knowledge of the world. We take it for granted that what we perceive on a daily basis is reality—this reality being more or less the same for everybody. But this is an illusion. No two people see or experience the world in the same way. What we perceive is our personal version of reality, one that is of our own creation. To realize this is a critical step in our understanding of human nature."

"Learn to measure the people you deal with by the depth of their soul, and if possible associate as much as you can with those of the expansive variety."

"People are rarely who they seem to be. Lurking beneath their polite, affable exterior is inevitably a dark, shadow side consisting of the insecurities and the aggressive, selfish impulses they repress and carefully conceal from public view. This dark side leaks out in behavior that will baffle and harm you. Learn to recognize the signs of the Shadow before they become toxic. See people’s overt traits—toughness, saintliness, et cetera—as covering up the opposite quality. You must become aware of your own dark side. In being conscious of it you can control and channel the creative energies that lurk in your unconscious. By integrating the dark side into your personality, you will be a more complete human and will radiate an authenticity that will draw people to you."

"Your task as a student of human nature is to recognize and examine the dark side of your character. Once subjected to conscious scrutiny, it loses its destructive power. If you can learn to detect the signs of it in yourself (see the following sections for help on this), you can channel this darker energy into productive activity. You can turn your neediness and vulnerability into empathy. You can channel your aggressive impulses into worthwhile causes and into your work. You can admit your ambitions, your desires for power, and not act so guiltily and stealthily. You can monitor your suspicious tendencies and the projection of your own negative emotions onto others. You can see that selfish and harmful impulses dwell within you as well, that you are not as angelic or strong as you imagine. With this awareness will come balance and greater tolerance for others."

"We humans are naturally compelled to compare ourselves with one another. We are continually measuring people’s status, the levels of respect and attention they receive, and noticing any differences between what we have and what they have. For some of us, this need to compare serves as a spur to excel through our work. For others, it can turn into deep envy—feelings of inferiority and frustration that lead to covert attacks and sabotage. Nobody admits to acting out of envy. You must recognize the early warning signs—praise and bids for friendship that seem effusive and out of proportion; subtle digs at you under the guise of good-natured humor; apparent uneasiness with your success. It is most likely to crop up among friends or your peers in the same profession. Learn to deflect envy by drawing attention away from yourself. Develop your sense of self-worth from internal standards and not incessant comparisons."

"Admiration is the polar opposite of envy—we are acknowledging people’s achievements, celebrating them, without having to feel insecure."

"We humans have a deep need to think highly of ourselves. If that opinion of our goodness, greatness, and brilliance diverges enough from reality, we become grandiose. We imagine our superiority. Often a small measure of success will elevate our natural grandiosity to even more dangerous levels. Our high self-opinion has now been confirmed by events. We forget the role that luck may have played in the success, or the contributions of others. We imagine we have the golden touch. Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last. Look for the signs of elevated grandiosity in yourself and in others—overbearing certainty in the positive outcome of your plans; excessive touchiness if criticized; a disdain for any form of authority. Counteract the pull of grandiosity by maintaining a realistic assessment of yourself and your limits. Tie any feelings of greatness to your work, your achievements, and your contributions to society."

"Your task is the following: After any kind of success, analyze the components. See the element of luck that is inevitably there, as well as the role that other people, including mentors, played in your good fortune. This will neutralize the tendency to inflate your powers. Remind yourself that with success comes complacency, as attention becomes more important than the work and old strategies are repeated."

"All of us have masculine and feminine qualities—some of this is genetic, and some of it comes from the profound influence of the parent of the opposite sex. But in the need to present a consistent identity in society, we tend to repress these qualities, overidentifying with the masculine or feminine role expected of us. And we pay a price for this. We lose valuable dimensions to our character. Our thinking and ways of acting become rigid. Our relationships with members of the opposite sex suffer as we project onto them our own fantasies and hostilities. You must become aware of these lost masculine or feminine traits and slowly reconnect to them, unleashing creative powers in the process. You will become more fluid in your thinking. In bringing out the masculine or feminine undertone to your character, you will fascinate people by being authentically yourself. Do not play the expected gender role, but rather create the one that suits you."

"Unlike animals, with their instincts to guide them past dangers, we humans have to rely upon our conscious decisions. We do the best we can when it comes to our career path and handling the inevitable setbacks in life. But in the back of our minds we can sense an overall lack of direction, as we are pulled this way and that way by our moods and by the opinions of others. How did we end up in this job, in this place? Such drifting can lead to dead ends. The way to avoid such a fate is to develop a sense of purpose, discovering our calling in life and using such knowledge to guide us in our decisions. We come to know ourselves more deeply—our tastes and inclinations. We trust ourselves, knowing which battles and detours to avoid. Even our moments of doubt, even our failures have a purpose—to toughen us up. With such energy and direction, our actions have unstoppable force."

"We have a side to our character that we are generally unaware of—our social personality, the different person we become when we operate in groups of people. In the group setting, we unconsciously imitate what others are saying and doing. We think differently, more concerned with fitting in and believing what others believe. We feel different emotions, infected by the group mood. We are more prone to taking risks, to acting irrationally, because everyone else is. This social personality can come to dominate who we are. Listening so much to others and conforming our behavior to them, we slowly lose a sense of our uniqueness and the ability to think for ourselves. The only solution is to develop self-awareness and a superior understanding of the changes that occur in us in groups. With such intelligence, we can become superior social actors, able to outwardly fit in and cooperate with others on a high level, while retaining our independence and rationality."

"As part of this experiment we must not only accept human nature but work with what we have to make it productive. We inevitably feel the need for status and recognition, so let’s not deny it. Instead, let’s cultivate such status and recognition through our excellent work. We must accept our need to belong to the group and prove our loyalty, but let’s do it in more positive ways—by questioning group decisions that will harm it in the long run, by supplying divergent opinions, by steering the group in a more rational direction, gently and strategically."

"Although styles of leadership change with the times, one constant remains: people are always ambivalent about those in power. They want to be led but also to feel free; they want to be protected and enjoy prosperity without making sacrifices; they both worship the king and want to kill him. When you are the leader of a group, people are continually prepared to turn on you the moment you seem weak or experience a setback. Do not succumb to the prejudices of the times, imagining that what you need to do to gain their loyalty is to seem to be their equal or their friend; people will doubt your strength, become suspicious of your motives, and respond with hidden contempt. Authority is the delicate art of creating the appearance of power, legitimacy, and fairness while getting people to identify with you as a leader who is in their service. If you want to lead, you must master this art from early on in your life. Once you have gained people’s trust, they will stand by you as their leader, no matter the bad circumstances."

"On the surface, the people around you appear so polite and civilized. But beneath the mask, they are all inevitably dealing with frustrations. They have a need to influence people and gain power over circumstances. Feeling blocked in their endeavors, they often try to assert themselves in manipulative ways that catch you by surprise. And then there are those whose need for power and impatience to obtain it are greater than others. They turn particularly aggressive, getting their way by intimidating people, being relentless and willing to do almost anything. You must transform yourself into a superior observer of people’s unsatisfied aggressive desires, paying extra attention to the chronic aggressors and passive aggressors in our midst. You must recognize the signs—the past patterns of behavior, the obsessive need to control everything in their environment—that indicate the dangerous types. They depend on making you emotional—afraid, angry—and unable to think straight. Do not give them this power. When it comes to your own aggressive energy, learn to tame and channel it for productive purposes—standing up for yourself, attacking problems with relentless energy, realizing great ambitions."

"See through their narrative and their shrewd attempts at distraction. They will often present themselves as holier-than-thou or as the victim of other people’s malice. The louder they proclaim their convictions, the more certain you can be they’re hiding something."

"You are born into a generation that defines who you are more than you can imagine. Your generation wants to separate itself from the previous one and set a new tone for the world. In the process, it forms certain tastes, values, and ways of thinking that you as an individual internalize. As you get older, these generational values and ideas tend to close you off from other points of view, constraining your mind. Your task is to understand as deeply as possible this powerful influence on who you are and how you see the world. Knowing in depth the spirit of your generation and the times you live in, you will be better able to exploit the zeitgeist. You will be the one to anticipate and set the trends that your generation hungers for. You will free your mind from the mental constraints placed on you by your generation, and you will become more of the individual you imagine yourself to be, with all the power that freedom will bring you."

"In human culture, we can see a phenomenon—changes in fashions and styles—that at first glance might appear trivial, but that in fact is quite profound, revealing a deep and fascinating part of human nature. Look at clothing styles, for instance. In the stores or in fashion shows we can perhaps detect some trends and changes from a few months before, but they are usually subtle."

"Sometimes the changes that are generated in a revolutionary period are rather trivial and do not last past the cycle. But sometimes, from a strong crisis, a revolution forges something new that lasts for centuries and represents progress toward values that are more rational and empathetic. In seeing this historical pattern, we must recognize what seems to be an overall human spirit that transcends any particular time and that keeps us evolving. If for any reason the cycle stopped, we would be doomed."

"Most of us spend our lives avoiding the thought of death. Instead, the inevitability of death should be continually on our minds. Understanding the shortness of life fills us with a sense of purpose and urgency to realize our goals. Training ourselves to confront and accept this reality makes it easier to manage the inevitable setbacks, separations, and crises in life. It gives us a sense of proportion, of what really matters in this brief existence of ours. Most people continually look for ways to separate themselves from others and feel superior. Instead, we must see the mortality in everyone, how it equalizes and connects us all. By becoming deeply aware of our mortality, we intensify our experience of every aspect of life."

"One of the functions of entertainment, I think, is education."

"I keep wondering why the Academy decided that they needed a separate category for animated films just at a moment when there are a lot of people who couldn't tell you whether a film is animated or not."

"Volunteering is good for our heart and soul."

"Poor management can increase software costs more rapidly than any other factor. Particularly on large projects, each of the following mismanagement actions has often been responsible for doubling software development costs."

"Software Engineering Economics is an invaluable guide to determining software costs, applying the fundamental concepts of microeconomics to software engineering, and utilizing economic analysis in software engineering decision making."

"If a project has not achieved a system architecture, including its rationale, the project should not proceed to full-scale system development. Specifying the architecture as a deliverable enables its use throughout the development and maintenance process."

"What we see in both software development and military operations is a tendency for the pendulum to swing back and forth between extremes. Yet in most cases, we need a balance between armor and discipline and between mobility and agility. Actually, though, I would say that the leaders in both the agile and plan-driven camps occupy various places in the responsible middle. It’s only the over-enthusiastic followers who overinterpret “discipline” and “agility” to unhealthy degrees."

"Agile development methodologies promise higher customer satisfaction, lower defect rates, faster development times and a solution to rapidly changing requirements. Plan-driven approaches promise predictability, stability, and high assurance. However, both approaches have shortcomings that, if left unaddressed, can lead to project failure. The challenge is to balance the two approaches to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses."

"The dictionary defines "economics" as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." Here is another definition of economics which I think is more helpful in explaining how economics relates to software engineering."

"If we look at the discipline of software engineering, we see that the microeconomics branch of economics deals more with the types of decisions we need to make as software engineers or managers."

"Throughout the software life cycle, there are many decision situations involving limited resources in which software engineering economics techniques provide useful assistance."

"Economic principles underlie the overall structure of the software lifecycle, and its primary refinements of prototyping, incremental development, and advancemanship. The primary economic driver of the life-cycle structure is the significantly increasing cost of making a software change or fixing a software problem, as a function of the phase in which the change or fix is made."

"“Stop the life cycle-I want to get off!”"

"The spiral model presented in this article is one candidate for improving the software process model situation. The major distinguishing feature of the spiral model is that it creates a risk-driven approach to the software process rather than a primarily document-driven or code-driven process. It incorporates many of the strengths of other models and resolves many of their difficulties."

"The Code-and-Fix Model. The basic model used in the earliest days of software development contained two steps:"

"The stagewise and waterfall models. As early as 1956, experience on large software systems such as the Semi-Automated Ground Environment (SAGE) had led to the recognition of these problems and to the development of a stagewise model to address them."

"Like many fields in their early stages, the software field has had its share of project disasters: the software equivalents of Beauvais Cathedral, the S.S. Titanic, and the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The frequency of these disaster projects is a serious concern: a recent survey of 600 firms indicated that 35% of them had at least one "runaway' software project."

"Most post-mortems of these software disaster projects have indicated that their problems would have been avoided or strongly reduced if there had been an explicit early concern with identifying and resolving their high-risk elements. Frequently, these projects were swept along by a tide of optimistic enthusiasm during their early phases, which caused them to miss some clear signals of high risk issues which proved to be the project's downfall later. Enthusiasm for new software capabilities is a good thing. But it needs to be tempered with a concern for early identification and resolution of a project's high-risk elements, so that people can get these resolved early and then focus their enthusiasm and energy on the positive aspects of their software product."

"Success in all types of organization depends increasingly on the development of customized software solutions, yet more than half of software projects now in the works will exceed both their schedules and their budgets by more than 50%."

"What is missing from the policy analyst's tool kit - and from the set of accepted, well-developed theories of human organization - is an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts."

"Humans have a more complex motivational structure and more capability to solve social dilemmas than posited in earlier rational-choice theory. Designing institutions to force (or nudge) entirely self-interested individuals to achieve better outcomes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts for governments to accomplish for much of the past half century. Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans."

"We should continue to use simple models where they capture enough of the core underlying structure and incentives that they usefully predict outcomes. When the world we are trying to explain and improve, however, is not well described by a simple model, we must continue to improve our frameworks and theories so as to be able to understand complexity and not simply reject it."

"The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2009 to Elinor Ostrom... "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons" and Oliver E. Williamson... "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm"."

"Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes."

"Ostrom cautioned against single governmental units at global level to solve the collective action problem of coordinating work against environmental destruction. Partly, this is due to their complexity, and partly to the diversity of actors involved. Her proposal was that of a polycentric approach, where key management decisions should be made as close to the scene of events and the actors involved as possible."

"Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems."

"No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn’t see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a large scale—religions, economic theories, ethnic pride—but we couldn’t condemn them for it, as it was in their moral natures and they were too stupid to know any better."

"Imagine being told that it hadn’t mattered whether the Christians or the Moors got Spain! I can still remember my shock. I got over it fairly quickly, though, because by that time I had learned enough history to know that in the long run it never mattered a damn where any particular race of people planted its collective ass."

"The leaf that spreads in the sunlight is the only holiness there is. I haven’t found holiness in the faiths of mortals, nor in their music, nor in their dreams: it’s out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don’t know what it is, this holiness: but it’s there, and it looks at the sky."

"“So as we’ve seen, not one faith has ever lived up to its promises. The world has never become a paradise, quite the opposite, in fact: think of the millions upon millions slaughtered, tortured, imprisoned for this great idea, this good news, this revolution. The visionary who works against human nature to impose his—or her—sweeping vision on the world is inevitably its worst enemy. Now, who isn’t? Consider the work of certain individual mortals who set themselves simple tasks. They saw no need to raise armies; they saw no need for revolution or bloodshed; they worked instead for realistic goals with the tools they had. And they succeeded, and their works have been of lasting benefit to humanity.” He erased the board with relish and chalked a new set of names: }}. “People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will.”"

"And what a clever guy this Harpole is, isn’t he? Awfully good at noticing all kinds of little unusual things about people and keeping them on file in his head. So he’s built a theory around us, has he? He added two and two and came up with five, but nobody else in the house was aware there was anything to count."

"“Funny thing about those Middle Ages,” said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”"

"How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring?"

"I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience."

"The truth is, Homo sapiens sapiens is pretty much the same the world over, regardless of skin color or technological development. Racists and provincial types have problems with this fact, but it is a fact. All mortals have the same potential, and only chance determines who’s playing a spinet or who’s clubbing dinner to death with a big rock. And, you know what? Mortals adapt to the environment in which they’re placed. Switch babies between savages and technologicals, and nobody notices! I know, because I’ve seen it done. I’ve seen the son of a club-carrying cave dweller fuming because his accounting software wasn’t quite adequate for his needs. All humans have the same brain package."

"“They find us outlandish,” Lopez admitted. “Extravagant. Eclectic. Unfathomable.”"

"“Like children, they’re bored by complicated things. More than bored: they feel threatened. Give a child mashed potatoes and butter, and he’s happy. He doesn’t want to try the rich sauce with capers, in fact he’ll cry if he’s forced to taste it. You see what I mean? But, listen, Joseph. A child is easy to control. Keep him happy, and he’ll believe what he’s told to believe.”"

"Has there ever been a revolution that produced something better than what it overthrew? The only thing people learn from being oppressed is how to oppress others!"

"When you hear a story, do you believe only the nice parts? Truth isn’t like a baked fish, where you can eat the flesh and leave the bones and skin. You have to eat it all."

"The awful bottom line, of course, is that if you’re going to rule the world, you have to have absolute power, and everybody knows what absolute power does."

"True believers aren’t real receptive to the idea that what they’re telling you is just mythology."

"When you laugh at something, you don’t fear it anymore."

"The same intact culture that made them good businessmen also made many of them lousy parents."

"I’ve been in the entertainment industry ever since, in one capacity or another. It’s better than the Inquisition. Usually."

"Faith and its attendant rituals sound like a good deal, the whole eternal salvation thing, but inevitably they lead to fear, oppression, the rack and flames."

"Ah, Los Angeles. One disaster after another, always has been."

"I looked up at several pockmarks in the nearest wall; if they weren’t bullet holes, the place had damned big hailstones."

"“Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment,” I quoted."

"I had a productive day, without the distraction of conversation."

"Did you know what would happen next? Did you know and sit there like God, silent, remorseless, useless?"

"Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn’t been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they’d been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself. It’s not good to see yourself in the mirror then."

"His nation of liberty was founded on the backs of Negro slaves and at the cost of exterminating the aborigines. As far as I can tell, the Yankee’s idea of freedom is his right to carry a pistol with which he may shoot strangers in the street."

"Privilege tends to soften the brain, or so I’ve observed."

"Religion has its place, certainly, in reinforcing ethical behavior amongst the masses, but any sufficiently enlightened secular laws will have the same effect. After all, most of the creeds of the world have essentially the same purpose, have they not? To enjoin men to be what we call moral, which is to say civilized. A civilized man obey the rule of law, he acknowledges that he must not injure his neighbors, and if injured by them, he must appeal to law for satisfaction rather than indulge in burning their houses over their heads as they sleep. Civilization is the ideal for which we strive, with so little perceptible success; yet we do succeed, in inches and over years."

"A missionary may persuade a painted savage to worship a cross rather than an idol; but he will not make laws that send that savage’s children to school, where they might learn to make the desert they inhabit another Eden by means of the advanced sciences. He may persuade his flock to love one another for his God’s sake, but he’ll invariably urge them to slaughter any neighboring tribe that still worships stone idols. This is the failure of religion as a force for the common welfare."

"Any brute will demand his right to be a law unto himself, beating his wife and his children as he pleases, and defend that right with his father’s rifle and think himself a patriot."

"“And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise,” Edward said. “What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation’s resources weren’t continually drained by strife?"

"Times had changed. Sooner or later, they always did."

"Is God a cruel bastard or what, to make love so painful?"

"“You’ve no appreciation of high romance, that’s your trouble,” Lewis said, climbing in and starting the motor. Joseph nodded somberly. “Boy meets girl, girl loses boy, everybody dies. I just don’t get it.”"

"Terrorism was too tame for the Scots: they used lawyers."

"“There,” Joseph said. “There’s your answer.” “It’s not an answer, little man. It’s many, many more questions.”"

"Just when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger, I was proven wrong."

"You have to be pretty damned hot and thirsty to enjoy a soy-milk smoothie, but they were, so it was okay."

"It was growing dusk, the blue hour when solid things take on a certain transparency and phantoms become palpable."

"It didn’t matter that they were terrible at being parents; they were also very rich, which meant they could pay other people to love Alec."

"“Isn’t that a little hard on him? You’re not only making him feel bad about something he didn’t do, you’re making him feel bad about something that didn’t even shracking happen.” “I believe churches used to call it original sin,” Rutherford agreed, looking crafty. “But what does it matter, if it serves to make him a better man?”"

"With the invention of printing, mass standardized culture had become possible. With the inventions of photography and then cinema, the standardization of popular culture began to progress geometrically and its rate of change slowed down. In addition, the complete documentation of daily life made possible by these technological advances presented the mass of humanity, for the first time in history, with a mirror in which to regard itself. Less and less had it been able to look away, as its own image became more detailed and perfect, especially with the burden of information that became available at the end of the twentieth century. What this meant, in practical terms, was that retro was the only fashion."

"“How, in this day and age, can any one of you claim to be better than your fellow human beings?” “Because we are,” said Marilyn Deighton-True with a shrug. “Face reality, Giles, or it will face you. You can spout all the socialiste nouveau crap you like, but it simply doesn’t apply to a meritocracy.”"

"“Alec is beautiful,” said Jill, bending down to kiss him. “Like a mushroom cloud!” scoffed Balkister."

"Rutherford was a historian, after all, and secretly enjoyed it when the truth did injury to modern sensibilities."

"Very shortly the temple was once again a wonder of the world, and the Ephesian Church settled down to a long reign marked only by the usual bitter quarrels, heresies, and internal dissent through which all major faiths struggle. Any religion begins in a moment of transforming truth. That moment quickly shatters into falsehood and shame and stagecraft, bitter comedy, sometimes murder. Thieves catch hold of any chance for power. The early years of a faith are best not too closely examined by its faithful."

"He caught his breath, absorbing the impact of the scientific discoveries, the advances in scholarship, the inevitable dwindling into insignificance of issues that had mattered more than his life. He closed his eyes, turned his face away, but he couldn’t stop his understanding. “You see?” said Edward. “They’re all happy pagans nowadays. When they take the trouble to worship at all. Enlightenment swept most of that nonsense away, and good riddance!”"

"“Consigned to everlasting fire,” said Nicholas in a faint voice. He had gone white as chalk. “No, you medieval imbecile!” Edward clenched his fists. “You still have no grasp of the truth, have you? Leave your angels and devils in the trash of history, where they belong.”"

"“When will you stop this metaphysical nonsense?” said Edward wearily. “But I suppose you’ve no other way to look at the matter, born as you were in an age of superstitious piety.”"

"It takes thousands of them to create an archive of human wisdom; only one to set a torch to it. Wouldn’t you have to say, then, that the work of the librarians is more typical of mortal behavior than the work of the arsonist?"

"Ah, the immortal ocean. Consider the instructive metaphor: every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable; but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she’ll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal."

"Doubtless he was going to start bragging about being a god. It went with the profile of this sort of lunatic."

"“Sex,” Kiu said thoughtfully. “And Fear. Get that big old devil behind them with a stick, and my radiant beauty in front of them, and they’ll run right off a cliff, if I ask.” “I’m a firm believer in Guilt, personally,” said Labienus. “Works well on individuals,” Kiu conceded. “Nothing like it for subtle motivation. Plant it deeply enough into a mortal’s psyche and it twists them endlessly.” Labienus sighed. “Get it in there young enough and it’ll do all your work for you. You’ll have only to prod the mortal along with a suggestion now and then.”"

"It’s sad when people are stupid."

"“I will say this once.” Edward turned to the others. “I’m in command on this mission. Do not, at any time, attempt to wrest control from me. If what you see dismays you, avert your eyes.”"

"The Rogue Cyborg is doing serious Rogue Cyborg stuff. He’s crouched before a data terminal as though it were an ancient altar, and from the look on his face what he’s praying for is desperate and bloody revenge."

"“So, um...are you alone out here?” “I was,” she said."

"Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep? Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside... You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow. No, Spirit. This ain’t any better than the Tao? No. Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither? No. I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels. Nicholas shrugged. And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou. Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache. Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest? None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas... What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life? Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity."

"“This is insane,” she said. “Why would mortals make it so difficult to get two little glasses of white wine?” “Human nature, my love.” Edward grinned and set his knee against hers under the tablecloth. “The desire of a few to dictate morality to the whole. And why do the masses submit willingly? Apathy. Or, perhaps, the opportunity to experience the thrill of the forbidden!”"

"Justice doesn’t exist! We did worse things. Nobody deserves to go to that place, Alec said. Anyway, weren’t you Christian types supposed to forgive everybody? I will shed no tears for that bastard’s damnation, said Nicholas stonily. No wonder nobody’s left that believes in your stupid religion, said Alec."

"That is one dark house your God lives in, man. Alec shook his head. You can keep your Age of Faith. Whyn’t you find somebody to worship who isn’t a shracking psychopath?"

"As it had been explained to David long ago, genetic diversity was very, very important. The more diverse the human gene pool was, the better were humanity’s chances of adapting to any new and unexpected conditions it might encounter, now that it was beginning to push outward into Space, to say nothing of surviving any unexpected natural disasters such as polar shifts or meteor strikes on Earth. Unfortunately, humanity had been both unlucky and foolish. Out of the dozens of races that had once lived in the world, only a handful had survived into modern times. Some ancient races had been rendered extinct by war. Some had been simply crowded out, retreating into remote regions and forced to breed amongst themselves, which killed them off with lethal recessives. That had been the bad luck. The foolishness had come when people began to form theories about the process of Evolution. They got it all wrong: most people interpreted the concept of “survival of the fittest” to mean they ought to narrow the gene pool, reducing it in size. So this was done, in genocidal wars and eugenics programs, and how surprised people were when lethal recessives began to occur more frequently! To say nothing of the populations who died in droves when diseases swept through them, because they were all so genetically similar there were none among them with natural immunities."

"“Why did I never understand...” “That it was vanity?” I said. “Mm, but so much worse...Delusion. Because, the thing is—human progress begins, not with one lone man with a weapon, however heroic. Nor with subtle governments, be they never so altruistic. It begins with a man and his wife in bed...and...how could I ever hope to govern humanity, without having been even that human?"

"“Oh, that’s childish,” says Nicholas in disgust. “Well, so what?” says Alec. “We happen to be children.”"

"“That wasn’t very godly,” Alec calls up to him. “And what has God to do with me?” Nicholas shouts back. “No voices speak to me out of any burning bush. No word at all. Hideous vacancy, monstrous indifference, and a senseless universe!” “Well,” says Alec cautiously, “I would think that was a good thing. Shouldn’t you have grown out of this by now? What do you want meaning in the universe for, anyway? Nothing means anything! We’re just here to go along for the adventure.”"

"“Edward has a purpose for us. Ruling the world, I assume.” “He can’t,” says Alec, aghast. “That’s what villains do!”"

"Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec’s forehead. “What’s the use of having a library in there if you won’t open the books, boy? What’s the good of augmented intelligence if you won’t use it?”"

"Edward holds up a hand for silence. “If you please, Captain: he’s thinking. Let us savor the exquisite rarity of the moment.”"

"He saw in memory Mendoza’s face, her black eyes sad as she downloaded a chapter on revolutions. Here you go. Great heroes and the things they wrecked. Always easier to destroy something than to create something. It’s harder to plant a garden than to blow up a building, and undoubtedly more boring, but you just might need to do it one day, eh?"

"“Why should we obey you?” Budu asked. “Because I’m, er, omnipotent,” said Alec."

"The fact is, people work hard and rely on Food Stamps&mdash;or SNAP Program&mdash;to be able to feed their families. When they work full-time they still live in poverty. That's wrong in our nation. Students who are losing hope because of the difficulty of finding jobs in this tough economy. What we need to do, what is best for America, is to raise wages, create jobs, and then we will move forward. Hard-working people are trying their best, but those who hold on to capital are not sharing the wealth, and there is the problem."

"For policy, the central fact is that Keynesian policy recommendations have no sounder basis, in a scientific sense, than recommendations of non-Keynesian economists or, for that matter, non-economists."

"An alternative “rational expectations” view denies that there is any inherent momentum in the present process of inflation. This view maintains that firms and workers have now come to expect high rates of inflation in the future and that they strike inflationary bargains in light of these expectations."

"It is paradoxical that an administration that came to office rejecting the whole apparatus of Keynesian economics finds itself presiding over a stream of what threaten to be permanent deficits."

"My published work is just a record of my learning. I'm sharing it with people so they won't make the same mistakes that I did. It's been a painful and slow process. My work is like a journey, a journey of discovery."

"My recollection is that Bob Lucas and Ed Prescott were initially very enthusiastic about rational expectations econometrics. After all, it simply involved imposing on ourselves the same high standards we had criticized the Keynesians for failing to live up to. But after about five years of doing likelihood ratio tests on rational expectations models, I recall Bob Lucas and Ed Prescott both telling me that those tests were rejecting too many good models."

"I remember how happy I felt when I graduated from Berkeley many years ago. But I thought the graduation speeches were long. I will economize on words. Economics is organized common sense. Here is a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches.1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible. 2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs. 3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do. 4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended. 5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency. 6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their choices. That is why it is difficult for well-meaning outsiders to change things for better or worse. 7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are some promises that you’d like to make but can’t. No one will believe those promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change. This is how you earn a reputation. 8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made. 9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do (but not the social security system of Singapore). 10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation. 11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government transfers (especially transfers to themselves). 12. Because market prices aggregate traders’ information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates."

"Q: “Professor Sargent, can you tell me what CD rates will be in two years?” Sargent: “No.”"

"Cagan’s adaptive mechanism for explaining expectations of inflation has sometimes been criticized as an ad hoc formulation that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that expectations are rational. In this paper, we have showed that conditions exist under which adaptive expectations are fully rational."

"What policymakers (and econometricians) should recognize, then, is that societies face a meaningful set of choices about alternative economic policy regimes."

"These ideas have implications not only for theoretical and econometric practices but also for the ways in which policymakers and their advisers think about the choices confronting them. In particular, the rational expectations approach directs attention away from particular isolated actions and toward choices among feasible rules of the game, or repeated strategies for choosing policy variables. While Keynesian and monetarists macroeconomic models have been used to try to analyze what the effects of isolated actions would be, it is now clear that the answers they have given have necessarily been bad, if only because such questions are ill-posed."

"Tom Sargent is a bit out of touch with the real world up there in his office in Minneapolis. A lot of the disagreement is ideologically based, though certainly not on Tom's part. I see this by talking to people. Certain people have a capacity for ignoring facts which are patently obvious, but are counter to their view of the world; so they just ignore them."

"I remember a seminar here while Tom was visiting in Chicago. Every body was talking; it was a very chaotic seminar. In the middle of the seminar. Tom made some point and the speaker didn't seem to understand it. Tom dropped it and didn't say anything for the rest of the seminar. At the end, he just handed the speaker a piece of paper with a bunch of equations on it and said, "Here's what I was trying to say." I thought it was a very friendly, constructive thing to do, but the speaker said, "this is Sargent's idea of a conversation" and laughed. I think it's just that Tom thinks he can get things settled on a more technical level. Tom and I talk quite a bit. I think that we influence each other a lot."

"Sargent said in a talk here last year that it is simply a methodological mistake to regard any macroeconomic policy action as an isolated episode. The only legitimate way to think of economic policy is as if the government adopts a policy rule (which may have a random element). What he meant was that he can't apply his methods to isolated policy episodes. My reaction is that the man in the street or even the man in the corporation boardroom, looking at the US Congress making macroeconomic policy, regards it as a possibly unstable episode. He not only doesn't know how it is going to come out, he doesn't imagine it to be the application of a policy rule plus a random error."

"Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the Battle of Austerlitz. If I do that, I'm getting tacitly drawn into the game that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. Now, Bob Lucas and Tom Sargent like nothing better than to get drawn into technical discussions, because then you have tacitly gone along with their fundamental assumptions; your attention is attracted away from the basic weakness of the whole story. Since I find that fundamental framework ludicrous, I respond by treating it as ludicrous – that is, by laughing at it – so as not to fall into the trap of taking it seriously and passing on to matters of technique."

"Using the popular macroeconomic models of the time, Lucas and Sargent showed how replacing traditional assumptions about expectations formation by the assumption of rational expectations could fundamentally alter the results. … Most macroeconomists today use rational expectations as a working assumption in their models and analyses of policy. This is not because they believe that people always have rational expectations. Surely there are times when people, firms, or financial market participants lose sight of reality and become too optimistic or too pessimistic. … But these are more the exception than the rule, and it is not clear that economists can say much about those times anyway. When thinking about the likely effects of a particular economic policy, the best assumption to make seems to be that financial markets, people, and firms will do the best they can to work out the implications of that policy. Designing a policy on the assumption that people will make systematic mistakes in responding to it is unwise."

"I think this is a department that reflects the city and reflects it not only in the makeup of the personnel — which is the most diverse department in the city by far — but also in the diversity of our thought and the recognition that policing is a very complicated social contract with the people that live in this city, and that social contract requires action on both parts."

"I am immensely proud to lead the men and women of the LAPD who work tirelessly every day to earn the trust of our communities and who risk their lives to protect those that live, work and visit the City of Angels."

"In a couple of decades ... every public safety employee, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, everybody will have them. I think it improves behavior on both sides of the camera, which is our goal."

"We don't turn people away because things are out of statute. You come to us, especially with a sexual allegation, we will work with you. We address these things seriously, and it's not just because it's Mr. Cosby."

"This is a national issue, one that is important when we talk about police legitimacy. This is an important national conversation we need to have. When something happens in Missouri or the streets of New York City, it has an impact here. We are all tied together."

"I judge him by the results I see in Watts at our public housing developments where the Community Safety Partnership has positively changed the culture of relations between the community and the police department. Over the last few years, Watts and the LAPD have each undergone a remarkable transformation for which I credit Chief Beck."

"Activists laud Beck for establishing cooperative relationships with a number of communities, particularly Latinos and blacks, and for his sophisticated approach to gang crime, which has been cut in half during his tenure."

"Beck is finishing Bratton’s legacy of transforming the department. It’s Beck who will bring it over the line and say, yes, LAPD is a new police force with a new culture, a new outlook, a new way of treating the public — especially the minority public — and we will never go back to the days of Rodney King because we have changed the culture of the Los Angeles Police Department."

"The LAPD is still haunted by one of the most notorious police beatings ever caught on camera, the assault on Rodney King, which resulted in ferocious riots more than 20 years ago. It’s a big reason why LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who wears his body camera on his chest, is eager for his department to embrace this technology."

"The seventeenth-century academic separation between fine and useful arts first fell out of fashion nearly a century ago."

"I was surprised, while preparing this lecture, to notice how, among my friends who had read the book, a division into two groups appeared. Both groups are equally discerning and educated, and as far as I can tell, equal in numbers. One group is eager to say that they don't understand a word of it, and there are artists and historians among them. Those of the other group claim that they understood it all on first reading, without difficulty. Of course I believe them both, without understanding the combination that separates them so sharply. Perhaps distinctive and contrasting features in the comprehension of works of art are responsible. What I say speaks to some, but not to others. Some are ready, and others are not. But when both someday find that they agree in understanding it, that day may be its last as a book alive in the dissension over its intelligibility."

"The notion of style has long been the art historian's principal mode of classifying works of art. By style he selects and shapes the history of art."

"Let us suppose that the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole range of man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful, and poetic things of the world. By this view the universe of man-made things simply coincides with the history of art. It then becomes urgent to devise better ways to devise better ways of considering everything men have made. This we may achieve sooner by proceeding from art rather than from use, for if we depart from use alone, all useless things are overlooked, but if we take the desirableness of things as our point of departure, then useful objects are properly seen as things we value more or less dearly."

"Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it."

"However useful it is for pedagogical purposes, the biological metaphor of style as a sequence of life-stages was historically misleading, for it bestowed upon the flux of events the shapes and behavior of organisms."

"We always may be sure that every man-made thing arises from a problem as a purposeful solution."

"The historian's special contribution is the discovery of the manifold shapes of time. The aim of the historian, regardless of his specialty in erudition, is to portray time. He is committed to the detection and description of the shape of time."

"Unless he is an annalist or a chronicler, the historian communicates a pattern which was invisible to his subjects when they lived it, and unknown to his contemporaries before he detected it."

"The cultural clock runs mainly upon ruined fragments of matter. No matter to what hazardous lengths we let out our line they still withdraw again, and further, into the depths. ... however, runs mainly upon ruined fragments of matter recovered from refuse heaps and graveyards, from abandoned cities and buried villages. Only the arts of material nature have survived; of music and dance, of talk and ritual, of all the arts of temporal expression practically nothing is known elsewhere than in the Mediterranean world, save through traditional survivals among remote groups."

"The universe has a finite velocity which limits not only the spread of its events, but also the speed of our perceptions. The moment of actuality slips too fast by the slow, coarse net of our senses."

"Although inanimate things remain our most tangible evidence that the old human past really existed, the conventional metaphors used to describe this visible past are mainly biological."

"The history of art... resembles a broken but much-repaired chain made of string and wire to connect the occasional jeweled links surviving as physical evidences of the invisible original sequence of prime objects."

"Instead of an idea of style, which embraces too many associations, [I] have outlined the idea of a linked succession of prime works with replications, all being distributed in time as recognizably early and late versions of the same kind of action."

"Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events."

"Kubler was the foremost scholar of Pre-Columbian and Post-Columbian art of his generation and brought the area into consideration of the discipline of art history (Willey). The Shape of Time remains fundamental for the concept of art history as "material culture." Kubler argued in it that art "can be expanded to embrace the whole range of [hu]man-made things." But Kubler also controversially asserted in Shape of Time that "art stands outside culture" and warned about a linear-historical perspective that would interpret objects through historical precedent. History, Kubler contended, is a process that continually transforms human sensorial capacities and knowledge through ongoing discovery."

"Worst of all, it [speculation of notable figures] provides fodder for the special educators, special education attorneys, ABA therapists etc. to legitimize their profits and to encourage the false hope and tears for toasted snow that so many parents of these children have."

"Most persons with an autism-spectrum disorder have never expressed their opinions on someone’s blog and never will. The neurodiverse often reach a vulnerable audience, as many persons on the spectrum have low self-esteem. Neurodiversity provides a tempting escape valve."

"It's [Autism has] prevented me from making a living or ever having a girlfriend. It's given me bad fine motor coordination problems where I can hardly write. I have an impaired ability to relate to people. I can't concentrate or get things done."

"But then I got fired from so many jobs, I ended up retiring and being supported by my parents."

"On my blog I attempt to dispute these notions by pointing out their failure to consider the long-term effects of autism on high-functioning autistics such as myself—let alone what should be done for the low-functioning autistics who cannot speak, or the “headbangers.”"

"But [not accomplishing] that does not stop me from wishing for a cure for future generations of children so they will not have to live like I have."

"Hopefully on my tombstone they will write, "We don't need no stinkin’ neurodiversity"."

"Usually, I was aware that other kids were bullying me, except occasionally when some girls in junior high… pretended to flirt with me and for a while. I did not understand they were making fun of me."

"One girl said I was like a Jew that sympathized with Nazis and I would gladly jump into [a] crematorium."

"Twiddling is one of my autistic things. I do it to calm me down. I twiddle frantically for a while, and I fantasize about all kinds of things while I twiddle."

"I don't have a visual imagination. Please, that trivializes my suffering. She [Temple Grandin] blows her own horn all the time."

"The goal of the [[War on Terrorism|war [on terrorism] ]] is more than just getting oil and fuel. The United States is intent on taking over the world... It's important we all understand that the main terrorist and the main enemy of the world's people is the U.S. government. Racism has been a weakness of this country from its beginning. Throughout history, all people of color, and all people who don't see eye-to-eye with the U.S. government have been subject to American terror."

"I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire ... [who] had severe dislike for the US government and those who held power in the US. I think all of them felt the US government and its spokesmen were all arrogant, racist, hypocritical, self-righteous, and power hungry..... You asked, 'Should freedom fighters support him?' Freedom fighters all over the world, and not just in the Muslim world, don’t just support him; they revere him; they join him in battle. He is no ordinary leader or an ordinary Muslim."

"When I think what the US military is doing, brazenly bombing country after country, to take oil resources, bringing about coups, assassinating leaders of other countries, and pitting neighbor nations against each other, and demonizing anyone who disagrees with US policy, and detaining and deporting countless immigrants from all over the world, I thank Islam for bin Laden. America’s greed, aggressiveness, and self-righteous arrogance must be stopped. War and weaponry must be abolished."

"Throughout this book, Martínez reminds readers again and again of why we should balance the wisdom of experience with the fire of youth and honor both perspectives. So many great leaders have boldly embodied this ethic, from the recently departed such as Yuri Kochiyama, Grace Lee Boggs, and Cedric Robinson, to those who carry on like Jamala Rogers, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and Betita Martinez herself."

"American families are in the process of passing along a $9 trillion legacy from one generation to the next. This is a lot of money, but it is distributed very unevenly.. ... Hand in hand with this money, I submit, what is really being handed down from generation to generation is the profound legacy of reproducing racial inequality. The legacy is difficult to discern because the language of family heritage hides it from our political consciousness."

"Mainstream sociological theory sees differences in jobs, skills, and education as the primary causes of inequality, and substantial wealth transfers embarrass this theory. The classical sociologist Emil Durkheim, for example, predicted that family inheritances would decline over time in favor of giving to charitable and nonprofit organizations, but studies examining actual bequests invalidate this predication. ... In 1989 charitable bequests constituted less than 10 percent of proceeds of estates valued at over $600,000 in the United States."

"A core part of my argument is that wealth, as distinct from income, offers the key to understanding racial stratification. ... The difference between the two is often muddled in the public mind, and only recently have the social sciences begun to treat wealth as an intrinsically important indication of family well-being that is quite different from income. ... Wealth represents a more permanent capacity to secure advantages in both the short and long term, and it is transferred across generations."

"During the late 1970s and early 1980s there was vigorous debate about the nature of visual mental imagery. One position (championed primarily by Pylyshyn, 1973, 1981) held that representations that underlie the experience of mental imagery are the same type as those used in language; the other position (which my colleagues and I supported, e.g., Kosslyn, 1980, 1994) held that these representations serve to depict, not describe, objects. The debate evolved over time... but always centred on the nature of the internal representations that underlie the experience of visualisation."

"We must begin by distinguishing between visual mental imagery and visual perception: Visual perception occurs while a stimulus is being viewed, and includes functions such as visual recognition (i.e., registering that a stimulus is familiar) and identification (i.e., recalling the name, context, or other information associated with the object). Two types of mechanisms are used in visual perception: “bottom-up” mechanisms are driven by the input from the eyes; in contrast, “top-down” mechanisms make use of stored information (such as knowledge, belief, expectations, and goals). Visual mental imagery is a set of representations that gives rise to the experience of viewing a stimulus in the absence of appropriate sensory input. In this case, information in memory underlies the internal events that produce the experience. Unlike afterimages, mental images are relatively prolonged."

"But because of the way in which depictions represent, there is a correspondence between parts and spatial relations of the representation and those of the object; this structural mapping, which confers a type of resemblance, underlies the way images convey specific content. In this respect images are like pictures. Unlike words and symbols, depictions are not arbitrarily paired with what they represent."

"A mental image occurs when a representation of the type created during the initial phases of perception is present but the stimulus is not actually being perceived; such representations preserve the perceptible properties of the stimulus and ultimately give rise to the subjective experience of perception."

"These organizational processes result in our perceptions being structured into units corresponding to objects and properties of objects. It is these larger units that may be stored and later assembled into images that are experienced as quasi-pictorial, spatial entities resembling those evoked during perception itself.... It is erroneous to equate image representations with mental photographs, since this would overlook the fact that images are composed from highly processed perceptual encodings."

"Like pictures, images seem to depict information about interval spatial extents. The scanning experiments support the claim that portions of images depict corresponding portions of the represented objects, and that the spatial relations between portions of the image index the spatial relations between the corresponding portions of the imaged objects."

"Even if it were clear what was meant, this sort of treatment would seem closer to describing what is taking place than to explaining it. I do not want to deny the value of describing a phenomenon; rich descriptions facilitate theorizing, and there is no more astute observer than Piaget. But in my view explanations of cognitive phenomena should specify the ways in which functional capacities operate. Piaget and Inhelder’s account is more on the level of intentionality, and hence is open to multiple interpretations at the level of the function of the brain. The do not specify how interiorized imitation operates, nor have they specified the format or content of the image. This level of discourse will never produce process adequacy, and hence seems of limited value."

"It is hard to define something one knows little about"

"Physics seems to have done reasonably well in studying electrons, although there is not to this day a precise definition of this term."

"Mr. Magoo Rule: Text and graphics must be easily distinguished and recognized. Don ́t make your audience members feel like the vision challenged Mr. Magoo—viewers of an electronic slideshow should not risk eyestrain!"

"Resist the temptation to use special effects. Think about science fiction movies with lots of special effects: If you notice that special effects are special effects, they will fail."

"Bullets are a convenient way to present the separate elements of a list. However, bullets are a bit like salt—often essential to bring out the best, but distasteful if overdone."

"We don't deliberately desire to scare anybody - we design our creatures to fit in harmony with the story and, of course, our forte is the grotesque. That's why our films were classified so many times as horror films, which they weren't. I would call a war film a horror film because in those you see guts split and people being slaughtered, but our films deal with fantasy and are more theatrical than realistic."

"[The skeleton] in Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was more frightening than the seven in Jason and the Argonauts. [...] Because we had seven skeletons I thought we were going to get seven "X" certificates but we got a "U" instantly. But one skeleton on its own is possibly more frightening than seven, and also in Seventh Voyage the skeleton was in a dark, spooky chamber, while in Jason the seven were out in the open on a sunny hilltop."

"I suppose we would be monsters to a Venusian. [...] We depicted the outer space creature as something strange rather than as a monster. He was from a strange place and therefore out of place in our familiar surroundings."

"I teethed on Frankenstein and Dracula but I feel that those films were made with greater taste than horror films are made today. They dwell too much on the gorier aspects of their subjects for some reason. I suppose it's because people are more jaded now."

"I enjoyed Young Frankenstein. I didn't think I would because I like my Frankensteins pure and clean like the original but I was very amused by Young Frankenstein - I thought it was very well-done. On the whole I dislike tongue-in-cheek sendups. But I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy Flesh for Frankenstein. From what I've heard about it the film approaches the subject from the gorier side and neglects the profundity of the original."

"We don't set out to deliberately scare with our creatures, we try to make them as awe-inspiring as possible."

"The art of motion has always intrigued me. How a body - when it throws its weight from side to side and sits down - actually sits down. What muscles interact to bring that simple movement to its conclusion. Movement is a fascinating process and each creature I have made and animated has had its own character according to its physiognomy."

"I am often asked if I would have liked to have been involved with Jurassic Park. The plain answer is no. Although excellent, it is not with all its dollars what I would have wished to do with my career. I was always a loner and worked best that way. Since the very beginning I fought and struggled under constant pressure to keep the design and final result within my hands. As time moved on this became more difficult, until I was forced to bow to the fact that my method of working, in the financial sense, was no longer practical. Model animation has been relegated to a reflection, or a starting point for creature computer effects that has reached a high few could have anticipated. However, for all the wonderful achievements of the computer, the process creates creatures that are too realistic and for me that makes them unreal because they have lost one vital element - a dream quality. Fantasy, for me, is realizing strange beings that are so removed from the 21st century. These beings would include not only dinosaurs, because no matter what the scientists say, we still don't know how dinosaurs looked or moved, but also creatures of the mind. Fantastical creatures where the unreal quality becomes even more vital. Stop-motion supplies the perfect breath of life for them, offering a look of pure fantasy because their movements are beyond anything we know."

"I remember once, in my garage studio whilst I was animating a dinosaur, that things were not going right. Gradually they got worse and worse, as they do in situations where you don't keep your temper, and in a fit of accumulated rage I threw a hammer at the floor. Unfortunately, it bounced and went through a huge plate glass painting I had been preparing to use in a miniature set and which I had spent weeks carefully painting. I almost cried with frustration, and there and then decided that if I wanted to make this my career, I would have to control my temper. I am not saying that I didn't lose my temper after that incident - I did - but I always tried to remember that plate glass painting. It was a timely and necessary lesson."

"For some reason the creation was called a rhedosaurus, and although I can't remember where this name came from, I suspect Hal Chester or one of the writers coined it. Over the years, people have suggested that the first two letters relate to the initials of a certain animator. I have no comment."

"The task of instilling pathos into a creature that was, after all, an innocent victim of circumstances was something I had set myself from the outset, although I was restrained by the script... The Beast is a poor lost soul brought back to life by man and then destroyed by man. If it sounds familiar, it is. King Kong was a huge influence, as he would be in all the other creatures I would be father to."

"The Ymir and Kong before him are both creatures wrenched from their natural environment against their will and finally killed by man. Although these creatures must always die, they should go out with a touch of pathos."

"Greek and Roman mythology had never been a favourite subject of mine at school, but as I grew older I began to appreciate the legends and realize that they contained a vivid world of adventure with wonderful heroes, villains and, most importantly, lots of fantastic creatures."

"It seems ironic that for most of my career I have been trying to perfect smooth and life-like animation action, but for Talos (which was the longest animation section of the film), it was necessary to create a deliberately stiff and mechanical movement in keeping with a bronze statue that had sprung to life."

"The most popular exhibits in any natural history museum are, without doubt, the dinosaurs. These creatures' popularity grows each year, partly because of the recent resurgence of dinosaur movies, but also because a skeleton of a full-sized tyrannosaurus rex still has the ability, even 65 million years after its death, to chill us to the bone."

"Although Gwangi had been an allosaurus in Obie's version, I decided to make him more of a tyrannosaurus, and so I used elements from both species to make what I suppose could be called a 'tyrannosaurus al'. This combination allowed me a flexibility between aggressiveness and agility. If you like, he was glamourized."

"When it came to the tiger, I found that animating the movements of a large feline animal posed some difficulties, as it required precise and miniscule advancements in movement throughout its body. As well as tigers, I also studied domestic cats, and by so doing managed to achieve a combination of mannerisms represented by both. The overall impression is of latent ferocity and a lust for blood, but at the same time there are also slow, graceful movements that mask the creature's power."

"Clash was destined to be my last hero picture, and looking back, the decision to end my career at that point was absolutely right. With all the problems involved in production, and the knowledge that I was losing precious control of solo animation, I was forced to concede that it was time to stand aside for others and their new technology to take over."

"Vegans tell corny jokes, not cheesy ones."

"Far from being misanthropic, when an animal activist reaches out to a fellow human being, she or he is not only advocating on behalf of animals but helping another person realize the connection between our oppression of animals and the oppression of humans — and how liberating one group benefits the other."

"Like most people, I spent my childhood eating meat, wearing leather, and loving the cats, dogs, and mice I grew up with — and not once recognizing that I was treating some animals with respect and others as faceless commodities. I was well into adulthood before I understood that such an inconsistency is as ridiculous as it is unjust. The truth is, we have an impoverished understanding of the animals we share this planet with, and that has led to more than a little hubris on our part. … Humanity's abuse of animals can be merciless in the extreme, and in trying to relate such cruelties faithfully, I have written about incidents and industry practices that may disgust you. But it is crucial that we see beyond the veil that hides this world of suffering from us. Equally important, we need to know that there is some optimism amid all the despair. And so we begin with a story of hope."

"A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as by the standard of his work."

"Nihilism, narcissism, and hedonism are natural results of the chaotic existential subjectivism popularized by the Left. If the hallmark of the baby boomers was rebellion, the hallmark of my generation is jadedness. Nothing really matters—we're cosmically alone."

"Baby boomers and their music rebelled against parents because they were parents—nurturing, attentive, and overly present (as those teenagers often saw it) authority figures. Today's teenagers and their music rebel against parents because they are not parents—not nurturing, not attentive, and often not even there."

"Real-life teens wish they could live like the teens Hollywood promotes. Everyone has sex, and relationships are deep and meaningful, even if they only last a couple episodes. There are never any consequences to any action, except for experiencing the angst of teenage life alongside the characters. When a generation becomes desensitized to the ramifications of the culture around them, it's natural to seek out any sort of feeling, even angst."

"As a general matter, the left's favorite three lines of attack are (1) you're stupid; (2) you're mean; (3) you're corrupt. Sarah Palin is supposedly stupid; Mitt Romney is supposedly mean; Dick Cheney is supposedly corrupt. Take away those lines of attack and watch the discomfort set in."

"There will be no conversation in which you call me a racist, and I explain why I'm not a racist. That's a conversation for idiots."

"When someone calls you a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe because you happen to disagree with them about tax policy or same-sex marriage or abortion, that's bullying. When someone slanders you because you happen to disagree with them about global warming or the government shutdown, that's bullying. When someone labels you a bad human being because they disagree with you, they are bullying you. They are attacking your character without justification. That's nasty. In fact, it makes them nasty."

"We believe freedom is built upon the twin notions that God created every human in His image, and that human beings are capable of investigating and exploring God's world. Those notions were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively."

"We receive our notions of Divine meaning from a three-millennia-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Jews; we receive our notions of reason from a twenty-five-hundred-year-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Greeks. In rejecting those lineages—in seeking to graft ourselves to rootless philosophical movements of the moment, cutting ourselves off from our own roots—we have damned ourselves to an existential wandering."

"Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.""

"President Obama is, however, a man who embodies all the personal characteristics of a fascist leader, right down to the arrogant chin-up head tilt he utilizes when waiting for applause. He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms—not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually."

"Is Donald Trump the best Republican candidate for president out there? It would be tough to argue otherwise. He's got all the makings of a breakout star; he's got bravado and the cash to back it up."

"The answer is deceptively simple: The Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs). They eat bagels and lox; they watch Schindler's List; they visit temple on Yom Kippur—sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming."

"The Jewish people has always been plagued by Bad Jews, who undermine it from within. In America, those Bad Jews largely vote Democrat."

"This is a clarifying election. We've learned that certain media members were willing to sell out long-held principles for ratings. We've learned that certain conservative voters were willing to let conservatism go by the wayside to hero worship a godking. Now we're learning that the Republican leadership is everything we thought they were. We will remember their names. It's time for a new brand of conservative leadership—and those who kowtow to Trump shouldn't be a part of it."

"Conservatives used to care too much about values and republicanism to buy ends-justify-the-means logic. But it increasingly appears that political expedience now outweighs basic morality. At least one side of the seemed to care about truth. Now both sides are competing to see who can race to the bottom fastest."

"This is pure ends-justify-the-means logic. And the means are pushing falsehood. The notion here seems to be that Trump is helping America avoid perdition, and thus must be given leeway to lie; if we didn't allow him to lie, the left would continue to do so, and then they'd win and drive us straight into Hell. But that suggests that truth no longer has the capacity to drive voters or Americans. If that's true, is finished as a principle—if we can only lie to voters to get them to vote for us, that undermines the decency of republicanism altogether."

"These demagogic non sequiturs undercut conservative claims to value the truth. And that has policy consequences: the supposedly conservative Pence and company have been pushing the lie for a week now that the free market is a failure and case-by-case economic fascism from above is the solution to lost American jobs. When truth doesn't matter, lies about policy are sure to follow."

"Just because the left has ignored and disparaged truth for years is no excuse for the right to do so as well. And unfortunately, truth-free politics seems to be growing exponentially on the right."

"Very often these days, we hear about the wonderful richness of the international community. Americans are chastised for failing to go along with the international community on climate change; failing to follow the consensus of the international community on health care; failing to mirror the priorities of the international community in foreign policy.But here's the reality: There is no international community. There is merely a group of states motivated by self-interest. Sometimes those self-interests overlap. Other times they don't. But let's not pretend that the international community somehow maintains a sort of collective moral standing merely by dint of numbers. In fact, precisely the opposite is often true. … Hamas isn't hiding the ball. It is evil. It celebrates evil. It pays terrorists to commit acts of evil. But the international community isn't hiding the ball either when its members refuse to condemn terrorism as terrorism when it is directed against disfavored members of the international community."

"Here's the truth: Radical Islam is dangerous. The Islamic world has a serious problem with radical Islam. And large swaths of the Muslim world are, in fact, hostile to Western views on matters ranging from freedom of speech to women's rights."

"So, what would tempt the New York Times to print an illustration directly from the mind of Julius Streicher? The fact that the Times, like many of today's mainstream media outlets, has been completely and utterly willing to cover for and, indeed, engage in anti-Semitism, so long as it is disguised as anti-Zionism. … Back in 2015, the New York Times printed a list of lawmakers who voted against the anti-Israel Iran deal—listing them by the percentage of Jews in their districts and noting which ones were Jewish themselves. Back in 2014, the public editor of the newspaper, Margaret Sullivan, advised reporters to cover the Palestinians as "more than just victims," thanks to the paper's insanely one-sided coverage. … The mainstream Left has engaged in self-flattering blindness when it comes to Jew-hatred. And all too often, that blindness veers into outright anti-Semitism."

"A pluralistic democracy requires three factors to function: a shared cultural space; a shared belief in key ideas, largely embedded in the Constitution; and a shared willingness to leave one another alone. As each component erodes, so, too, does the possibility of a united country."

"If tyranny is going to come in the United States, it's going to come from people who are so fearful of the liberty of Americans, that they believe that the government should shut down all sorts of freedoms that we hold dear."

"Okay, well, the fact is that if you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough. That'd be a you problem."

"They're talking about this dumb story that President Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes. Which, by the way, I don't care whether it does anything, I just think it sounds cool. I mean, what if there are sharks in the hurricanes? What if it's a sharknado? What then, guys? Have you thought about that? Just the idea—any time you're talking about nuking a random thing that's not really going to hurt anybody, I'll admit, the 13-year-old boy in me is kinda for it."

"There was a national apology for slavery. It was called the Civil War where 700,000 Americans died."

"Meanwhile, the polarization of the American public continues apace with wokescolds doing their best to ruin every aspect of American life. I'm very excited that Merriam-Webster Dictionary has now added the non-binary pronoun they to the dictionary. Because when I look at a book for definitions of words, what I want is a made-up definition of a word that has never been used this way in all of human history: a plural noun, used as a singular noun, to refer to a singular gender. We're gonna use a plural noun, and Merriam-Webster is gonna go along with this, which just demonstrates once and for all that logic has gone out the window. People are tailoring science to meet politically correct demands, people are tailoring language to meet politically correct demands."

""I am a Jew." Those have been the words of the Jewish people for three millennia. Those were the words of the men, women and children of Masada. Those were the words of the followers of Bar Kokhba. Those were the words of Jews in Granada in 1066, and the Rhineland in 1096, and Khmelnytsky from 1648 to 1657, and Kishinev in 1903, in Hebron in 1929. Those were the words of Jews in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Those were the last words of Daniel Pearl. And those are my words, too."

"There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood who feel the obligation—they have a perverse leftist view of history, pushed by the Soviet Union, that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it was not leftism, it was Christianity. And therefore, the cure for intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity."

"There certainly is a war on Christianity. It's coming from some people who are secular Jews. It's coming from a lot of leftists. Most Jews in America don't care about Judaism."

"Ben Shapiro: Why are we mainstreaming delusion? Drew Pinsky: It's not delusion. Samantha Schacher: Why would you call it delusion? Ben Shapiro: Because Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner—I'll call him Caitlyn Jenner, because that's… Samantha Schacher: No, it's her. You're not being polite to the pronoun. Disrespectful. Ben Shapiro: Okay, forget about the disrespect. Facts don't care about your feelings. It turns out that every chromosome, every cell in Caitlyn Jenner's body, is male, with the exception of some of his sperm cells. It turns out that he still has all of his male appendages. How he feels on the inside is irrelevant to the question of his biological self."

"Ben Shapiro: I don't frankly give a damn what you think of me, since I've never heard of you. Andrew Neil: And I've never heard of you before I briefed myself for this, but that's not the issue. You haven't— Ben Shapiro: Then why the hell are you interviewing me, sir? Andrew Neil: It's an interesting book. But my point is, your book claims that society— Ben Shapiro: Well, it would be nice if you would quote it from time to time."

"And as far as the free speech situation, what I will say is that no company has the obligation to literally pay anyone. The Daily Wire is a publisher, it is not a platform. I have never called for Candace, or anyone else, for that matter, to be banned from YouTube, to be banned from X, to be banned from any platform. That is a different story, obviously, when it comes to any publisher. Any publisher gets to make decisions about what it wishes to purvey and not."

"So the only other reason you should ever have a conversation, or be friends, with anyone on the left is—and not even be friends—if you are in public in front of a large audience, and then your goal is to humiliate them as badly as possible. That is the goal of the conversation. The goal is not to convince the person. The goal is not to make friends with that person."

"So let's say, let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet over the next hundred years—say, ten feet over the next hundred years—and it puts all the low-lying areas on the coast underwater. Which—let's say all of that happens. You think that people aren't going to just sell their homes and move?"

"But, what we can't do, is suggest, as the Bernie Sanders left does, that healthcare is an inalienable right and therefore you can put a gun to my wife's head—she's a doctor—and you can force her to provide care at any cost you wanna pay. You can't do that and hope to increase the supply of healthcare."

"You can't magically change your . You can't magically change your sex. You can't magically change your age. … Trump won the nomination because he was anti-left, not because of any political viewpoints, he was slapping people on the left and people on the right went, 'Yeah, those people need to be slapped!'"

"The left believes in a hierarchy of victimhood, if you are L.G.B.T.Q., then we suggest that you are very top of the victimhood hierarchy. You have been most in the United States and therefore your opinion must be taken with the most gravitas. … Black folks have been historically victimized in the United States, which of course, is true. But the idea that every black person now is being individually victimized by the United States is not true. … Way down at the bottom are white straight . Those are people whose opinions do not matter at all. Because those are the people who are the beneficiaries of the system. They don't get to talk about the system because they were the ones who built the system."

"The argument, I guess here, is that would you kill baby Hitler? And the truth is that no pro-life person on earth would kill baby Hitler, because baby Hitler wasn't Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby. What you presumably want to do with baby Hitler is take baby Hitler out of baby Hitler's house and move baby Hitler into a better house where he would not grow up to be Hitler, right? That's the idea."

"Questioner: So, I figure you've probably heard this before, but C. S. Lewis makes the argument that because of Jesus' exclusive claims, that he is either a liar that intentionally led people astray, a lunatic that believed he was the son of God and he wasn't, or he is Lord. Would you put him in one of those categories, or would you put him in another, separate category? Ben Shapiro: So, I mean, because I'm a Jew, I'm just gonna, I mean… look, I'm a Jew, so obviously, for those who are not particularly versed in Judaism, the reason we are not Christians is because we don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah or a physical iteration of God. … So the option from within Judaism is to suggest that Jesus was actually a historical figure who was saying a lot of things which Jews would agree with, because if you read a lot of the New Testament, it, as you would expect, mimics a lot of things in the Old Testament; and that he was actually a political figure; and that the Romans crucified him because he was a political figure who was attempting to lead a rebellion against their tyranny. That's the Jewish historical claim about Jesus."

"Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass."

"Occupy Wall Street is just like the Arab Spring. Both are run by people who don't shower, hate American capitalism, and despise Israel."

"So Jason Collins is a hero because he's gay? Our standard for heroism has dropped quite a bit since Normandy."

"If you wear your pants below your butt, don't bend the brim of your cap, and have an EBT card, 0% chance you will ever be a success in life."

"would have turned 21 today if he hadn't taken a man's head and beaten it on the pavement before being shot."

"Your "safe spaces" should be renamed "fascist areas," you jackbooted intellectual weaklings."

"Hey, @SusanWojcicki, would love to discuss this with you. Do you think your employees should be cavalierly labeling those who militantly hate white supremacy "Nazis," and then shaping algorithms on the basis of such lies?"

"The New York Times … called him "the cool kid's philosopher" and a "brilliant polemicist," who "does not attack unfairly, stoke anger for the sake of it, or mischaracterize his opponents' positions.""

"Shapiro, a popular conservative pundit with half a million Youtube subscribers and 1.86 million Twitter followers, is known for his mantra "facts don't care about your feelings." … A New York Times profile called Shapiro "the cool kid's philosopher.""

"The Daily Wire was co-founded by one Ben Shapiro, perhaps the world's bestknown Orthodox Jew, and a good friend of mine."

"[T]he conservative pundit Ben Shapiro has referred to liberal Jews as "JINOs" and "bad Jews" who "vote Democrat" and therefore "undermine [the Jewish people] from within." … This is why Shapiro, himself a frequent target of anti-Semites, has drawn the interest of white-nationalist terrorists … he is saying what they want to hear."

"If Rush Limbaugh is someone your dad listens to on his car radio, Mr. Shapiro, 33, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is the cool kid's philosopher, dissecting arguments with a lawyer's skill and references to Aristotle."

"The thing that I loved so much about the monsters is that the assumption is that they're broken and that fixing them no longer makes them a monster so they have to stay that way. And if you want to write something sort of complicated that's about kind of the nature of us all having a monster inside of us, I mean, I think that's why the monsters have endured. They're all weird reflections of aspects of our personalities. I can't really think of anything I'd rather be doing than that."

"I think, about a lot of these monsters is that there are these very central, basic, human emotions that you can talk about when you talk about these monsters. You can talk about Dracula’s longing for love, you can talk about the Mummy’s longing for love. So as messed up as they may be in terms of their behavior, and they are monsters, there always has to be a rooting and an understandable idea behind why they are who they are."

"I started [following a vegan diet] for health reasons. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and I wanted to maintain my performance on the court. Once I started I fell in love with the concept of fueling your body in the best way possible. Not only does it help me on the court, but I feel like I’m doing the right thing for me. … I literally couldn’t play tennis anymore, so it really changed my life. Because it was starting to take away what I loved, I had to make some changes, I had to change my life. Thankfully, I was able to find something that helped me get back to doing what I loved. … It changed the pace that I live at. It changed everything."

"He is exaggerating, for sure—130 mph approaches the high end for the likes of Sampras."

"Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us."

"One way in which feminists try to remedy the disparity is to legally mandate paid leave for female employees who give birth, even if a company is struggling to stay afloat. Such laws provide powerful incentives for bosses-male or female-not to hire women to begin with. Of course, it's easy to support such legislation until you end up getting laid off because your boss was losing too much money by paying absent employees."

"Shows like Queer As Folk, The "L" Word, Will & Grace and Sex and the City, all do their part to promote alternative lifestyles and erode traditional values."

"The one thing people crave above all else at this moment in history in the people they send to Washington is authenticity — people who are real, and in person, in private and in public the same person — people of character and integrity and dignity — people you can rely on to defend your interests and your values and to never be persuaded or influenced or manipulated by forces and interests and people who do not have the interests of America at heart...One of the things we’re missing from our political dialogue right now is the idea that the United States is a home. It is more than an accounting sheet. It is more than the sum of its GDP, its total tax collections or its total outlays. America is a family. America is the place that we love, to whom we give our loyalty and our allegiance and our devotion.But Washington has forgotten for too long that it owes its loyalty, dedication and devotion to the citizens of this country who call it home. Washington does not serve the interests of people living overseas or corporations headquartered all across this globe, but the real flesh and blood citizens who together create this nation, this home."

"Everybody who stands against Donald Trump are the people who’ve been running this country into the ground. They’re the people who’ve been controlling the levers of power. They’re the people who are responsible for our open border, for our shrinking middle class, for our terrible trade deals. Everything that is wrong with this country today, the people opposing Donald J. Trump are responsible for."

"Acosta: What the President is proposing here does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. The says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It doesn't say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer. Aren't you trying to change what it means to an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them you have to speak English? Can't people learn to speak English when they get here? Miller: Well, first of all, right now it's a requirement to be ; you have to speak English. So the notion that speaking English wouldn't be a part of the immigration system would actually be very ahistorical. Secondly, I don't want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world; it's a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you're referring to was added later; is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty."

"Acosta: This whole notion of they have to learn English before they get to the United States: are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia? Miller: I am shocked at your statement, that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It actually reveals your cosmopolitan, er, bias, to a shocking degree, that in your mind... No, this an amazing moment... Acosta: It sounds like you're trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country through this policy. Miller: Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you've ever said, and for you that's still a really... The notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong and so insulting."

"There are 7 billion people in the world. Most of them are good, hardworking, decent, honest, principled people. But the reality is there's a limit to how many people any country can bring in. And we as a country have a right to say we want to bring people based on their ability to contribute to our economy, to be safe, productive citizens, and to uplift the nation as a whole."

"Far from the images of 1960s kids rebelling against power, most of my classmates who were upset by the things I was saying ... wanted to have a more disciplined administrative environment with stronger, tougher rules about what you can and can’t say—set by adult authority figures!"

"I've always been a nonconformist. I think that nonconformity is part of the American DNA. And in today's culture, the nonconformists are conservatives."

"The Democrats are fighting for illegal aliens. Donald Trump is fighting for American citizens. That's what this whole thing is about. You have covered this better than probably anybody for years. You understand this is about sovereignty. It's about working men and women. It's about safe communities. It's about wages, living conditions, quality of life. This is the battle right now right before our very eyes."

"I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil."

"Immigration is an emotional issue. And it ought to be an emotional issue because it affects people’s lives."

"The president is the sole head of the executive branch. So there's 15 communist crazy judges on the court that, each of them working together, can block and freeze each and every executive action?"

"The People ask me what emotions I am feeling right now. There is incredible sadness, there is incredible anger. And the thing about anger is that unfocused anger or blind rage is not a productive emotion, but focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history. And we are gonna channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks."

"We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time. ... [W]e are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce."

"The President has been clear for months now that the United States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus ... [T]hat has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration, frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States. The President has been very clear about that. That is the formal position of the U.S. government."

"It wouldn't be military action against Greenland. The Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO, for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States."

"The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland."

"Trump adviser Stephen Miller, considered the administration’s “brains,” says that “the real world” is governed by “strength,” “by force,” and “by power.” “The United States,” he says, “is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower.” The U.S. is supposed to be different, but Trump sees the world as an extension of himself — a place where bullies gain wealth and power by mistreating others and controlling them with fear."

"Stephen Miller (from that special category of American military-age males who nevertheless somehow Perpetually Evaded the GWOT, or PEG)."

"Stephen Miller: policy advisor and vitamin-D-deficient Minion. You might well think that's unfair, anyone can find a photo of someone looking a bit like a Minion. But with Miller, it is genuinely hard to find a photo of him not looking like a Minion."

"The ICE activity we are protesting is allegedly being directed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Miller called a meeting of ICE officials last month and directed them to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens.” Not to target “the worst of the worst,” as the president had indicated. Not even to target criminals or gang members at all. But to roll up to a Home Depot where day laborers gather. To post up outside of a grammar school graduation in a neighborhood with a high percentage of undocumented residents. Just go and grab them and pull them away from their homes and their babies and their lives. Just lock them up. Now that’s what they’re doing. That’s what we’re protesting. And if it turns out their papers actually are in order, which it has more than a few times, then tough shit."

"There’s a video that made the rounds in the early days of the first Trump administration, when Miller was a lower-level spokesghoul. It’s our boy as a Santa Monica High School student and worth taking a fresh look at now that we know he’s one of the architects of this ICE campaign of random terror. There he is. The sneer for which he’d come to be known is already fully formed. His beard is largely too embarrassed to have anything to do with his face. He’s got the general look of someone you’d see juggling outside of a Barenaked Ladies show because he’s afraid to go inside the Barenaked Ladies show because someone in there might be doing pot. He’s arguing for his right to leave his trash behind. And he seems to want to be cheered for it. Los Angeles is crazy vast. Santa Monica High School is 12 miles from where I sit writing. If I left right now, I’d be there in an hour. But do you know what’s one half of one mile, one ten-minute walk away, from Santa Monica High School? The beach. A really nice, clean, and well-maintained beach, as a matter of fact. Miller could have been taking a surf lesson, eating some Dippin’ Dots, or watching a majestic sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Instead, he’s sneering to a crowd about his right as a white person to leave his mess behind for a brown person to clean up."

"The cousin of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accused him Thursday of being responsible for an ICE agent fatally shooting a woman in Minneapolis. “When I called out my cousin for being the ‘face of evil’ I DID NOT stutter,” Alisa Kasmer wrote on Threads, referencing a Facebook post she made last year. “Renee Nicole Good’s death is blood on YOUR hands, Stephen. I’m just glad our grandparents are no longer alive to witness the shame you have brought to our family,” Kasmer added. [...] Kasmer, who lives in Miller’s Los Angeles hometown, where there were major protests last summer over ICE raids, publicly blasted him on Facebook in July, recalling babysitting him as a child and describing him as once “lovable and harmless” but now someone she could no longer support or tolerate. “I grieve what you’ve become, Stephen… I will never knowingly let evil into my life, no matter whose blood it carries—including my own,” she wrote at the time."

"Kasmer described a young Miller as an “awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention” but was “always the sweetest with the littlest family members.” She added that he was “young, conservative, maybe misguided, but lovable and harmless.” “People always ask me, ‘What happened to you?’ I don't have a clear answer," Kasmer continued in July. “I can only surmise it was a perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition-all of it mangled into something cruel and hollow, masquerading as strength. You were born into privilege, into safety, and wealth. And somehow, you've weaponized all of it.” Kasmer has also accused Miller of hypocrisy, criticizing him for leading the Trump administration's harsh immigration policies that take away the very opportunities that once helped his own family come to the U.S. and build a life. “We’re Jewish—we grew up knowing how hated we were just for existing,” Kasmer told The New Republic in December. “Now he’s trying to take away the exact thing that his own family benefited from: that ability to create a life for themselves, to prosper, to build community, to have successful businesses—to live a rewarding life.”"

"Trump’s rhetoric in his speeches to the military has been awful—he has ridiculed former commanders in chief, castigated sitting elected officials, and told the members of America’s armed forces that other Americans are their enemies. But his actions are worse. In deploying troops to American cities, he has set up a confrontation in which military commanders may soon have to choose between obeying the president and obeying the law. “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Judge Karin Immergut—a conservative Trump appointee—wrote last week when she blocked Trump’s attempt to send troops to Portland. The White House aide Stephen Miller likely foreshadowed Trump’s next moves, including possibly ignoring such rulings, when he lashed out at Immergut’s decision. Miller, a man who hates being called a fascist, made the fascistic accusation that a “large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is being “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”"

"Among the results of the backlash against the family-separation policy was the decision by David Glosser to speak out against his nephew Stephen Miller, sharing the history of his family's difficult journey to the United States in order to disprove the premises of the White House's approach to immigration. In 2018, he wrote in Politico about having "watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country." "I had a unique platform from which to speak," Glosser told me. "I had no choice other than to reveal the truth to the background of our family and how it relates to the background of the architect of this catastrophe." Miller, for his part, sees his family's ancestral home of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as having been harmed by "globalists" and the "owners of capital.""

"It's our blood and bones And these whistles and phones Against Miller and Noem's dirty lies"

"We really look for a story first and scares second. I think that ultimately makes the scares more effective. Most people look for the scares first and build the story around it, but that’s something that I’ve been lucky enough to learn while working with these great directors who have spent their lives making these kind of movies. So that’s what we look for: is there great drama? And then we go from there."

"I’m a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better. I think that the movies that we do are better because our budgets are lower, and it forces people to think within a box."

"Every day we strive to keep the fighting spirit of this unique individual alive on the pages of the entity to which he gave all and which bears his name. And progress is being made. New media is growing and thriving, reaching more people in more countries all over the globe, breaking stories and fighting battles minute to minute, if not second to second. Meanwhile, the corrupt media establishment is struggling to modernize and maintain credibility with the public. Just as Andrew had envisioned."

"One thing we specifically discussed that night was our desire to start a site that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel. We were sick of the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media and J-Street. By launching Breitbart Jerusalem, the journey comes full circle and a promise between two friends is fulfilled. And in a very real sense, Breitbart News Network returns to its roots."

"But I… don't believe that gender is just binary, and I never have, so that's what pulls me to sometimes politically identify as a lesbian, because I'm a feminist, and I feel like women are still so suppressed. I don't feel like we've come that far. But I also feel like there are people all along the spectrum, so in that sense, I feel like I would be more bisexual or just, you know, open-ended."

"The vegan diet in the western industrial society is important to me because I feel that if you open yourself up to eating dairy and meat then you’re taking part in basically a holocaust for animals. You know it’s very different if you’re in some tribal situation where people are fishing — like how we used to live. Maybe we would have eaten meat sometimes. But this kind of American idea we have of traditional eating is the cause of so much torture and misery. I don’t want to eat that – it’s gross. Animals are my friends and so it feels weird to eat them."

"The meat industry doesn’t want you to think about all the animals they are torturing and killing. And they definitely don’t want you to think about all the diseases related to eating meat. Their only concern is making a profit. A long time ago I made a decision to quit eating meat and dairy products. Animals are not ours to torture and dominate. If I was to eat factory farm meat or dairy products I would be taking part in the torturing and killing of animals. There’s just no way! Animals are my friends, so why would I want to hurt them?"

"We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now. ... While we await the precise moment when all of capitalism's victims will indignantly rise to destroy the system, we are being devoured. ... Some of us are going to have to take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for selective retaliatory violence."

"There should, I feel, be one branch that is purely political, operating the rent strikes, the breakfast programs, the People's Bazaar's where all sorts of food are sold, hospitals or clinics (free, of course), and what I will term cottage shops to employ those who will work for the new medium of exchange&mdash;love and loyalty."

"Comrade, Repression exposes. By drawing violence from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on&mdash;their power to organize violence, our acquiescence."

"All the objective conditions are present here in the Black Colony for revolution."

"Most of the fascist functionaries live as unguarded as I do. I could slip a knife between Max Rafferty's ribs. The Agnews and Du Ponts, the Rockefellers and Morgans, all of the Getty, Hunt, and Hughes types who sneak around in armored cars and jets are just as reachable. Anyone who will come out of his bomb shelter can be had. Imagine what Nixon's armored car would look like if I stepped out of the alley and hit it with the anti-tank rocket launcher under my coat&mdash;a ball of fire. Hell will be their reward."

"Rape isn't fatal. So imagine my indignation when I saw a chatroom called "Rape Survivors." Is this supposed to impress me? Someone fucked you when you didn't want to be fucked and you're amazed that you survived? Unless he used a chainsaw instead of his banana, what's the big deal? I don't mean to be horrendously offensive and insensitive here, but everyone survives rape. Some women are killed afterwards, but that's murder, not rape. To say that you're a rape survivor is as meaningless as saying you're a jury duty survivor or a divorce survivor. Lots of things in life suck—that doesn't mean we survived them. The word survivor applies to people who are alive after being stabbed 73 times with an ice pick or mauled by rabid wolverines, not to a woman who gets banana when she doesn't want it. Just because you got raped, you have to rape the English language? You vindictive bitch! Also, don't you ever get tired of being the victim? How many failed relationships are you going to blame on a single violation of your personal space?"

"A poll has shown that 63% of Americans, in their contemptible complacency, refuse to accept the theory of Evolution to this day. 150 years after this theory was put forward by Charles Darwin, Americans still have trouble accepting it in this puritanical, damn-near theocracy that we call home."

"After Sarah Palin, you guys are running Mitt Romney. And I've got to say, I saw the appeal of George W. Bush, I saw the appeal of Sarah Palin – I do not see the fucking appeal of Mitt Romney! I mean, you guys can't say that he's some kind of down-home folksy motherfucker, 'cause he's not; he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a golden fork up his ass! [...] You can't say that you like him because he's a true conservative, because he's not; when he was governor of Massachusetts, he governed as a liberal. In most states, he would've been considered a Democrat based on the way he governed. He was a Massachusetts Republican. The thing about Mitt Romney is, he's not a conservative, he's not a liberal, he's just a businessman."

"Justin Bieber is just the latest giant leap forward in the pussification of the American male. If he went to my school looking like this, we wouldn't have called him JB, we would've called him PB – for Punching Bag!"

"[...] I was thinking about the fact that we're coming up on the 18th anniversary of September 11th, right? So, that means we're now gonna have adults that were not born when the attacks happened. And that's crazy to me. And that just means there's people who have grown entirely in the post-9/11 world. That sucks, you didn't even get to see how much better things were before Osama bin Laden came and kicked us in the shin and then we fucking slit our own throats afterwards."

"My father likes to talk about the stroller accident that resulted in me becoming a Republican."

"You have to feel for the French; they were great once."

"It's a great country."

"All right you fucks, shut up! We got a call to order!"

"I'm too pretty to go to jail."

"[T]here is no campaign trick or spending level or candidate whisperer that can prevent a party from committing political suicide if it wants to."

"I'm a Detroit guy."

"My story is very boring. Mostly about hair loss."

"I'm not an establishmentarian... You think I really want the guys in polyester suits in Springfield, Virginia, running the fucking country? ... I'm an iconoclast, but I am an elitist — with incredibly popular taste."

"If Trump turns out to be the answer, I'm incredibly proud that Jeb Bush did not want to be any part of the vile question."

"If Trump kept up Jeb's schedule for one day, he'd be in the hospital... He doesn't open a rally with "I want everybody to write down the name of any Mexican they know and put it in a bin because they are going to pay." It was all a code word for "civilized". Jeb was the anti-Trump in a Trump year. But being the anti-Trump is a huge badge of fucking honor. I think you get that tattooed on your forehead: "I'm the anti-Trump." People will be congratulating him on that the rest of his life."

"I'd rather cut my arm off than vote for that jerk."

"Loyalty is not a small thing. I'm an old Irish pol. No loyalty is owed, if no loyalty was given."

"It's a choice between Trump, who is terrible for the country, and Cruz, who is terrible for the party. He's too smart for his act ... and he's probably pissed that a bigger con man showed up."

"The pain is legit. But Trump is a stupid vote. Because Trump won't solve any of those things, he'll make them all worse. You're voting against your pain. You're voting to create more. You're going for a kind of witch doctor of politics who is promising things based on magic."

"[H]aving problems is not a license to vote stupid. People need the tractor to plow the damn field, now."

"We like to say law, order, freedom — pick one, amigo."

"[I]f your banker comes in one day wearing a diaper, speaking gibberish, you're going to pull your money out of that checking account."

"You think the pissed-off steelworker in Akron has trouble now? Wait until we have a financial collapse and they take 25 percent off the dollar. He'll be serving hot dogs in an American restaurant in China."

"I don't mind technique... I can be shameless. I have a long career at this. But when everything is a short con, then there's never another short con. Because you need trust, and you've destroyed it."

"I don't mind a good fight on an issue. I like that stuff. I don't mind negative ads. But when the fighting is over meaningless stuff, like "you're-low-energy-because-you-use-big-words-and-don't-hate-anybody-and-I-wear-a-red-hat-that-says-Make-America-Great-Again-because-I-played-a-business-guy-on-TV"? We cheapen the category to the point where we're getting an outcome that is actually a bit dangerous."

"My revenge is living well... I want to go get on a freighter and go through the Panama Canal. All I've ever wanted in my life is freedom and access. I like being backstage and watching the weird, human drama of all of these strange personalities that politics attracts."

"[O]ld lady sends her $25 to defeat Nancy Pelosi, and $22 of it goes to "fundraising costs"."

"[Y]ou can't have grievance politics without endless whining. I think if you got the Founding Fathers or the first hundred guys killed at Anzio Beach, brought them back to life, and said, "What do you think of all this?" "What a bunch of whiners. Have you ever had 400 Germans coming at ya? Put on a red hat and say Make America Great Again? What have you done, pal?""

"If we have real, creative destruction here with Trump, and we have Armageddon or worse, out of the ruins will come new successes. New movements. And eventually, new rackets. And I'll be in on them. I admit it, I'm a racketeer."

"Trump has gotten six or seven stories in his presidency so far, that if they happened in 1981, there would have been serious talk about the president needing to resign. And that's gone now, that ray gun of, "We don't do this. You can’t get away with that" is pretty much gone."

"Everything is a racial stereotype with him half the time; we've got to admit that about Trump."

"[T]here was something about Obama that brought out the real alt-right crap. And because it was like one of these things where, "Hey, there are a bunch of cannibals that have joined our army, and they’re doing pretty well on the left flank." "Good, give them guns." You know? That kind of mentality. And so now, half the party is eaten by cannibals. And guess what? They’re eating us next."

"Any good demagogue is very courageously telling people exactly what they want to hear."

"People get what they vote for."

"A Moscow loving grifter is on the loose in the White House. Shame on the Vichy Republicans who constantly enable him."

"[T]he larger moral cowardice that has overtaken the party... Trump's shtick is that he's the grievance candidate... He's focused on the economically squeezed Caucasian voter... He is speaking to that rage. Mexican rapists, clever Chinese traders, African American people as dogs. That's Trump's DNA."

"Whatever interesting things America have happened, they've happened first in California."

"[W]e've got to break this equation of "I'm right, you're evil. So everything you do is suspect, everything you say is a lie, your facts are fake news." Because that is an acid on politics. We've got to get rid of that."

"You want to win in politics? Stop wasting time being dragged screaming out of hearings and learn to f'ing organize. Signed, Reality."

"GOP last tracks have been lurching in wrong direction. Big thanks to ol’ POTUS who is working so hard to make the midterms all about him and his epic racist madness."

"Well, you know, the future is always unmade, and my crystal ball is badly cracked because I’m one of the geniuses that said that "Trump is going to lose by a couple of million votes; he can't win." Well, he lost by a couple of million popular votes, but in the Electoral College, very narrowly, he was able to win."

"If Napoleon had nuclear subs, we’d all be speaking French. So, the history thing can be oversold."

"[H]ow popular is the president? Normally, they lose seats when they are kind of average popular. If they are unpopular, it tends to have a magnifying effect. And we do know, from averaging all the polls together, that Donald Trump is the most unpopular first-year president in the history of polling, easily. There’s nobody – he is first, second, and third place. So that is a bad thing... You know, there could be a foreign intervening event. Martians land with the same hair and say, you know, "Only he understands us, and we are going to save the planet." But, assuming normalcy, the forces are pretty bad."

"[T]he more he governs, often the more trouble he gets into. He does not improve; he gets more unpopular, at least with the two-thirds of the country that is very suspicious of him."

"Trump is going to go under an electron microscope. And everything I know about Donald Trump, and I know a fair bit about him going back to my Jersey days when he was operating in Atlantic City – that’s where I first kind of encountered him – he is one of the least likely people to survive an electron microscope into his life, I believe, and his business life of anybody. So, my instincts are strongly that they are going to find some stuff."

"[T]he disease of the Republican Party is we treat base voters like swing voters, when, in fact, is you want to put the base under some pain to attract other people to get to a majority number."

"[T]he only mark-to-market thing in politics is Election Day; everything else is hot air."

"I've said the Romney scenario just because: Right about Putin, right about Obama, right about Trump. And he’s no drama; a nice boring presidency of competence."

"In the end, they killed Rasputin."

"Now, there is of course one great rescue device for the Republican Party that we have thankfully relied on time and time again and that of course is the Democrats."

"Mike is the most entertaining, most knowledgeable, and most insightful guy I have ever dealt with. I am constantly entertained by him."

"I like Murphy. He's very mischievous. Very funny. He has no problem puncturing the conventional wisdom. He has that Irish twinkle in his eye."

"Cellular automata are now being used to model varied physical phenomena normally modelled by wave equations, fluid dynamics, Ising models, etc. We hypothesize that there will be found a single cellular automaton rule that models all of microscopic physics; and models it exactly. We call this field DM, for digital mechanics."

"Under the roof of one controversial assumption about physics, we discuss five big questions that can be addressed using concepts from a modern understanding of digital informational processes. The assumption is called finite nature. The digital mechanics model is obtained by applying the assumption to physics. The questions are as follows: 1. What is the origin of spin? 2. Why are there symmetries and CPT (charge conjugation, parity, and time reversal)? 3. What is the origin of length? 4. What does a process model of motion tell us? 5. Can the finite nature assumption account for the efficacy of quantum mechanics?"

"Feynman considered Fredkin a brilliant and consistently original, though sometimes incautious, thinker. If anyone is going to come up with a new and fruitful way of looking at physics, Feynman said, Fredkin will."

"Bennett from IBM, Fredkin, and later Toffoli investigated whether, with gates that are reversible, you can do everything. And it turns out, wonderfully true, that the irreversibiilty is not essential for computation. It just happens to be the way we designed the circuits."

"I will be succinct, eschewing vainglorious hyperbole."

"Present action, though futile, is preferable to passive acceptance of such a fate as awaits us."

"Is it not unsettling to consider the blind unlikelihoods that shape one’s fate?"

"It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be...infuriating."

"By his twentieth year he was a thorough adept in all of what we may term the “carnival arts,” and already a widely traveled young man. From mastery of the mountebank’s larcenous skills to the study of outright felonious appropriation, and all its subsidiary sciences, proved but a short step for Nifft, who always credited his early “dramatic training” with his success as a thief, vowing it had given him a rare grasp of his trade’s fundamentals: lying, imposture and nimble movement."

"While it is foolish to deny the dark around us, it is futile to exaggerate it."

"And I make bold to say that I am not the only one of my countrymen who could profit from taking this admonition to heart."

"I have in mind the notion that is so fashionable nowadays, namely that we live in a Dark Age where puny Science quails before many a dim Unknown on every hand. Surely this sort of facile pessimism dampens the energy of inquiry even as it leads to obscurantism—toward a despair of certainty which encourages us to embrace truths, half-truths, and the most extravagant falsehoods with a promiscuous lack of discrimination."

"Granting that our knowledge be limited, what can it profit us to traffic in lurid fantasies and errant imaginings? When—certainty failing us—we must speculate, let us recognize the difference between careful enumeration of reasonable hypotheses, and the reckless multiplication of bizarre conceptions."

"I shall present as certain only those data corroborated by exhaustive research, or by my own personal investigations, as I am not untraveled for a bookish man. Wherever doubt exists, I shall unambiguously state its degree and nature, along with whatever grounds I may have for preferring one hypothesis over another. If, despite all I have said, the reader disdains such honest ambiguity, and stubbornly prefers the unequivocal assertiveness to be found in factitious travelogues penned by raffish “explorers,” or in the specious “natural histories” compiled by crapulous and unprincipled hacks who have never left their squalid lofts in Scrivener’s Row, then there is nothing further I can do, and I leave him, with apologies, to his deception."

"Those feats of deep cunning and brave flair—we’re all allotted a few of them, and we get no more, no matter what our longing is. And you know, you’re lucky if you even recognize when you’re having your best moments. Half the time your soul is looking the other way when they come. And you never grow wise enough to know what they were until you have passed the hope of having more."

"Dalissem chuckled. It felt like being grinned at by a big mountain cat—delightful for the beauty of the animal, disturbing for the possible sequel."

"And you could see at a glance that Defalk was a simple man who wanted no more than to be brilliantly rich, admired, and unencumbered with work. His face said it so plainly: “I’m an excellent fellow. Isn’t such a life no more than my proper portion?”"

"We all thought you such a daring romantic then, and so outspoken about all us more conventional souls! Remember what you used to say about the world of business? All toadying and chicanery, lean purses fawning on fat ones for favors? Were those not the days? How far we wander from our youthful views!"

"And most important, nothing was to be taken for granted in that place. In Death’s world, any covenant, no matter how mighty, can fall null—any spell, however cogent, can be abrogated. The only certain law in that place is Death itself."

"Can it be your spirit does not thrive? Can it be you’ve weighed your life of kissing arse and crouching before fat purses, and have found it wanting?"

"Good soldiers stay alive by being unsentimental and having a quick eye for the main chance."

"For the past three years, young Wimfort had enjoyed so ample a competence from his parent, that he’d been able to buy his way deep into the mysteries of the arts of Power. He purchased no real understanding, of course, for that’s bought by the coin of toil and thought."

"At that age you invent extravagant compensations for bruises to your dignity."

"“You realize of course, Barnar, that it is simply not possible that we’re actually doing this?” “I’ve come to the same comforting conclusion, old friend. Therefore let’s away—an impossibility can only do us an unreal sort of harm, after all.”"

"The assumption that we would ever be called upon to perform this second task now appeared quite clearly to me as the most extravagant folly, based on a wild delusion conceived by a raving idiot."

"But ah! what a drear hell it was we now had to venture through! What a maelstrom of relentless gorging, one creature upon another! The claws and jaws of the upper world are red enough—who denies it?—but the carnage has intermissions, periods of amiable association, zones of green peace and fructification. In the subworlds, the merciless seethe of appetites never simmers down."

"Now a true ocean is the sky’s open floor—that’s the feeling men love in it, the reason they venture upon it, apart from gain or exploration."

"This is not genuine scholarship! Real research is a coming-to-grips with phenomena. This, as a transcription of the ocean’s infinitely various text, is a fraud, an egregious counterfeit, which patly reduces the Primary Sea’s endlessness to a cozy finitude, such as it pleased this puny entity to regard it, for he must have had but a feeble stomach for enterprise of a dark or difficult kind."

"We’re none of us more than wisps of desire and imagining! What man is not, at the center of his mind, a ghostly wish-to-be haunting the jerry-built habitation of his imperfect acts? Haunting the maze of what-has-been?"

"Deeper and deeper. Ever greater power. Ever greater evil."

"The great in Evil, and the great in [Goodness|Good]]—both leave an immortal residue."

"The demons are not our ancestors—we are theirs. The greeds and lusts, the wealth of horrors here, are not the archetypes of our own—they are the derivatives, the dreadful perfectings of all the evil that men have spawned and nourished. Call Man a great, roasting beast, spitted and turning above the fire of his own unending cruelty. The things of this world then, and of those yet farther down, are the drippings of the tortured giant, Man."

"“He’s here, of course, strictly through his own ambitious carelessness.” “Prime flaws of youth, of course—but also its strengths, this carelessness and ambition.”"

"Ambitious dabblers in sorcery add much to the hell that is on earth."

"Rage and wounded pride look painful on a young face. Sixteen is a difficult age to get on with. There’s much to like—the freshness, the force of conviction. But there is also a certain arrogance, an inevitable concomitant of development, perhaps, which one must always struggle to forgive."

"It was more than sad, the eternal unteachability of youth."

"The essence of nightmare lies less in the simple experience of horrors than in the unpreventable fruition of horrors foreknown."

"The boy was unquestionably a great natural talent, if not an outright genius, in the art of complaint—tirelessly inventive, and completely shameless in the matter of interpreting his dissatisfactions as someone else’s—anyone else’s—criminal failures to content him."

"“Come on,” I said. “We have to try. The effort is utterly pointless, but inaction seems an even greater agony.”"

"Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!"

"Weigh then your wealth, and judge if it’s more dear To you than life. If not, your course is clear."

"It’s always been an exceedingly curious thing to me, just how incurious most people are about all save their own little island of time and place in the world."

"Never rush into anything—unless into is the direction you want to go."

"Any established power system grows decadent over time, if there is nothing with the strength or motivation to challenge it, and if it refuses to challenge itself."

"After a moment she let go of him and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry,” she said to both of them. “Don’t be, child,” said Trixie. “Sometimes crying is the best medicine you can give yourself.” “I never cry,” Maggie said, hearing the tears in her voice, and the anger. “Crying’s for people who are helpless.” “Who told you that?” asked Trixie. “Learned it from looking around.” “Well, it’s not true. You can’t always judge by appearances. Crying’s a power tool to cleanse the soul, if you use it right. I think you used it right. Do you feel helpless?” “No,” said Maggie."

"“I should have killed or confused you when I had the chance. You are destruction. You are corrosion. You are death to order. Family, cast him out before he infects the rest of us as he has these.” “You may speak in your own defense, Tom,” said Aunt Agatha. “She’s right, though; I embody those things.” He held out his hands, open. “I bring you change.”"

"He thought about spiders, twisting thread into beautiful symmetry, taming chaos with ordered nets that greeted the dawn, hung with globes of dew that caught and held cores of sunlight, and tiny images of the world."

"$175,000 will get the bridge completely restored and will give us a place to put it, That will get us at least a few of the computers going. And up until now, everybody’s been doing everything for free—I don't want people going broke on this. Fandom is fandom, but people have to eat and live."

"I got those, Data’s chair and console, the side walls, and some panels from Vegas. And though I didn’t know I'd have the entire bridge someday, I knew they were an invaluable history of Trek, I couldn't allow it to bring me down. I spent almost a year trying to convince people to help me. If worst came to worst it could go to a rich guy’s house but then no one would see it. Once this happened, that's how this bridge got forgotten about—people changed hands, people got fired, I didn't know if he had standing assembled walls or what, My whole thing was: this is good, it's great to have a dream, but it’s great to have your feet on the floor too. They said: ‘You have to do something. This can't remain in this condition."

"Gibbs is thankful to be alive. He really thought life was over, and for him to admit that is huge, because he’s not that kind of guy. After all this time, the writers still find new places to take him. NCIS was never a show about the crime cases, because sometimes we solve ’em, sometimes we don’t. This is a show about characters. The audience takes real ownership of the people we play."

"I was never interested in playing him with a big red S on his chest. I’m much more attracted to the underbelly stuff. Gibbs is a loner, with emotional scars a mile deep that run in a million different directions. At work, he’s a leader. But who is he if you take away his job? I play him, and even I don’t know the answer to that."

"Change is healthy. Any actor can depart this show and it will survive. In my mind, there is nothing unclear about how I got here. You go to different shows and hear the chirping about who’s No. 1 on the call sheet or who has the biggest trailer. For me, it’s about doing a job as well as you can. If your job is to get somebody coffee—and I did that in my early days—then make it the best cup of coffee possible. Do the work. And do it with pride."

"My parents kept things real. I had no idea they were famous. In fact, it didn’t hit me until one day when I was riding in the car with my father in Ann Arbor, Michigan—I was maybe 8 and could barely see above the dashboard—and we stopped at a crosswalk. Suddenly we were surrounded by people who recognized my dad and were really thrilled to see him. I remember looking at this man I thought I knew so well and thinking, “Who are you?”"

"Because Launchpad appeared in 'DuckTales' and we used Roboduck as the Superman character, the hero who gets all the glory as opposed to Darkwing, fans try to connect the two realities, They are two different universes in my book. We work in the alternate Duckiverse."

"My brother was like, We're going to have to change the locks and put bars on the windows! But I thought about it for a minute and I thought, Here's a role I could look back on and say, Man, I played a vampire. In, like, Twilight. I mean, how many people get to do that?"

"Everything has become so easy. It's great that it's at your fingertips, but I miss those good old days. And we're connected, but it can be very alienating. There is this distance between all of us because we're speaking to each other through cameras and monitors and icons and Emojis."

"I really wanted Elliot's clothes to feel like it was a bit of an urban combat uniform. We needed the wardrobe to reflect his desire to disappear from the world. So I suggested a hoodie. Well, maybe I shouldn't say 'suggest.'"

"Please tell me you're seeing this, too."

"It's sad! Some really tragic moments have happened in my life and I found myself not getting emotional. Subconsciously, I was saving the grief so that, down the line, I could layer pain on top of pain. Because I want to feel that throughout my life. I want it to be easily accessible."

"Someone took a selfie with me today on the street, and to see them plug in their passcode right in front of you — it’s not something I would ever do, and it’s borderline creepy, but my show just makes me so much more aware of how to conduct oneself in public. It’s little things we take for granted, like holding your passport out while you wait in line at an airport, and someone can screenshot that in a heartbeat. The amount of information that we arbitrarily extend to the world is very mind-boggling to me. It’s like we’re saying, “Go ahead,” Clint Eastwood-style, “make my day.”"

"I know Elliot does not come across as charismatic, but to me he is."

"One word: Mischief."

"I could use my imagination and I read a lot about mental health. And that puts you in the perspective of just how difficult it is to live in a mind that that doesn't always feel like your own and how…I mean, just, that's brutal in its own way. And that can be a very lonely, difficult place, and a very difficult frame of mind to articulate to anyone, to even want to share with anyone."

"Malek has about three facial expressions in his arsenal, so his eyes do a lot of the work on Mr. Robot."

"The rhetoric [during the 2016 presidential election] that was used to describe women really enraged me, and just kind of brought me back to those feelings of when I was younger. I was told I needed to "sit properly," and I need to "speak less" and "smile more" and "lose weight" and just be this perfect little girl."

"When I first released the song [Quiet], I put on my site like, "I'm a survivor of abuse and anorexia and this is my song in response to it." And so when the song went viral, it became "the anti-Trump song," it was like a really political thing. And I'm so glad I stuck to the truth...I was like I'm not going to try to please others and say, oh yeah, this is not political. I just stuck with what it really was, my truth."

"I was put on a diet when I was 10. My mother said that women with smaller mouths are attractive, so keep my mouth small, don't talk or laugh so loud. I was taught to observe and listen. I burnt time burning calories when I could have been thinking about other things."

"For me to deal with my own anxieties about it and my friends' anxieties, I can create art. That's how I feel better about things... ["Quiet"] was just a way of giving people some space to feel love and hope in this time of fear mongering."

"[It is] so important for women of color to have a voice, because we have been living in a paradigm where women of color, and men of color, and all genders in-between color — our voices have not been as quote-unquote "valuable." That is a problem because that creates a sense of not belonging, and invisibility. I felt so voiceless, and like I didn't matter. Like I was an inconvenience of space because I didn't look like the woman in the magazine or I didn't have the same upbringing as the people I was watching on television. But now that women of color are rising...a lot of women of color are bearing a lot of responsibility of healing their cultures, and there's a way that women are able to empathize deeply, and they are able to express things that can maybe help the mainstream culture understand. Because I think the more we tell different types of stories, the more tolerance there will be."

"The message that really pisses me off is like, "Well, women in the Middle East are getting their genitalia cut, so you should just shut up." That is completely wrong. The point is we're not all truly free until we're all free, and the women who have mouthpieces need to speak up for the women in other places, and for men too."

"Gun rights and gun control, however, have lived together since the birth of the country. Americans have always had the right to keep and bear arms as a matter of state constitutional law. Today, 43 of the 50 state constitutions clearly protect an individual’s right to own guns, apart from militia service. Yet we’ve also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.... Today, the NRA is the unquestioned leader in the fight against gun control. Yet the organization didn’t always oppose gun regulation.... In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control. The organization’s president at the time was Karl T. Frederick, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer known as “the best shot in America”—a title he earned by winning three gold medals in pistol-shooting at the 1920 Summer Olympic Games. As a special consultant to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Frederick helped draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation.... Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales. The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms."

"Like the KKK, the NRA was also formed right after the Civil War. The organization’s first major involvement with promoting gun laws tainted by prejudice was in the 1920s and 30s. In response to urban gun violence often associated with immigrants, especially those from Italy, the NRA’s president, Karl Frederick, helped draft model legislation to restrict concealed carry of firearms in public. States, Frederick’s model law recommended, should only allow concealed carry by people with a license, and those licenses should be restricted to “suitable” people with “proper reason for carrying” a gun in public. Thanks to the NRA’s endorsement, these laws were adopted in the majority of states. The 1960s saw another wave of gun control laws that were, at least in part, motivated by race. After Malcolm X promised to fight for civil rights “by any means necessary” while posing for Ebony magazine with an M1 Carbine rifle in his hand and the Black Panthers took to streets of Oakland with loaded guns, conservatives like Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, began promoting gun control. Black radicals with guns, coupled with the devastating race riots that wiped out whole neighborhoods in Newark and Detroit in 1967, helped persuade Congress to pass the Gun Control Act of 1968. That law barred felons from purchasing firearms, expanded the licensing of gun dealers, and barred imports of “Saturday Night Specials”—cheap, often poorly made guns that were frequently used for crime by urban youth. As one gun control supporter at the time frankly admitted, a close look at that law revealed that it wasn’t really about controlling guns; it was about controlling blacks. And the NRA, in its signature publication, American Rifleman, took credit for the law and extolled its virtues."

"The National Rifle Association’s days of being a political powerhouse may be numbered. Why? The answer is in the numbers. Support for, and opposition to, gun control is closely associated with several demographic characteristics, including race, level of education and whether one lives in a city. Nearly all are trending forcefully against the NRA. The core of the NRA’s support comes from white, rural and relatively less educated voters. This demographic is currently influential in politics but clearly on the wane. ...the heart of the organization’s power is the voters it can turn out to vote, and they are likely to decline in number."

"In recognition of the nation’s changing demographics, the NRA is making a major push to diversify: Its new spokesman, Colion Noir, is an engaging African American millennial. Yet the NRA’s annual convention remains largely a sea of white folks. And as the NRA’s reluctance to make a statement in support of Philando Castile suggests — many believe the group would have immediately backed a white concealed-carrier in such circumstances — there is still a long way to go.... By the light of the law, the answer is easy: The Constitution prohibits racl discrimination in all rights, including the right to bear arms. By the light of history, however, the answer is far more complicated. From America’s earliest days, the right to bear arms has been profoundly shaped by race. Indeed, for much of our history, the right’s protections extended almost exclusively to whites. The founding generation that adopted the Second Amendment also enacted racially discriminatory gun laws. Fearing slave revolts, early American lawmakers prohibited slaves — and often free blacks, too — from possessing weapons of any kind."

"In December 1882, ... appeared before the justices of the Supreme Court... to argue that corporations like his client, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, were entitled to equal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Although that provision of the Constitution said that no state shall "deprive any person... " or "deny to any person..." Conkling insisted the... drafters intended to cover business corporations too. ...The Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted after the Civil War to guarantee the rights of freed slaves, not to protect corporations. Conkling, however, had unusual credibility... If anyone could testify to the intent of the... drafters, it was Conkling, who was one himself. ...Conkling produced a musty, never-before-published journal that purported to detail his committee's deliberations. ...There was just one small problem with Conkling's account of the drafting... it was not true."

"Although a procedural snafu prevented the Supreme Court from issuing a final ruling... justices soon after embraced Conkling's argument... In the years that followed, the Supreme Court would invoke those corporate rights to invalidate numerous laws governing how businesses were to be run, supervised, and taxed. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, when a scholar set out to identify every Fourteenth Amendment case heard by the Supreme Court... 28 cases [dealt] with the rights of African Americans... 312 cases... with the rights of corporations."

"Despite the fact that corporations have never been subjected to systematic opression like women and minorities... today corporations have nearly the same rights as individuals... a considerable share of the Constitution's most fundamental protections."

"[I]n Citizens United... justices ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. The decision was wildly unpopular, with poles showing an overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans opposed. ...As of 2016, sixteen states and hundreds of municipalities had endorsed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United..."

"Four years after Citizens United, the Supreme Court expanded the rights... in the Hobby Lobby case. ...The company ...was allowed an exemption from a federal rule requiring large employers to include birth control in their employee's health plans. The Hobby Lobby decision has since been cited to support the claims of businesses whose owners do not wish to provide wedding services to same-sex couples on grounds of religion."

"[T]he Citizens United and Hobby Lobby cases are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg."

"Corporations did not win their constitutional rights in quite the same way as women, racial minorities, or gays and lesbians... [who] pursued their claims in both courts of law and the court of public opinion. To achieve lasting constitutional change... required more... Lawsuits were backed up by broad-based, popular social movements that demanded rights for those who had been denied the original premise of We the People."

"Although Americans often think of the Supreme Court as a bulwark to protect minority rights against the tyranny of the majority, the court's record... was dishearteningly bad prior to the 1950s. For most of American history, the Supreme Court failed to protect the dispossessed and marginalized... [T]he court's record on corporate rights was much different. In 1809... corporations won that first case—and have compiled an impressive list of victories... [T]he court has insisted that broad public sentiment favoring business regulation must bend to the demands of the Constitution."

"For most of American history, the court has been decidedly favorable to business, regardless of whether the majority of justices was liberal or conservative."

"Many critics of Citizens United believe that corporations have the same rights as individuals because the Supreme Court defines them as people. The proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United is based on this idea... Yet corporate personhood has played only a secondary role in the corporate rights movement. ...[J]ustices have more often relied upon a very different conception... an association capable of asserting the rights of its members. This... has paved the way for the steady expansion of corporate rights. Indeed, corporate personhood has traditionally—and surprisingly—been used to justify limits on the rights of corporations."

"Firearms regulation"

"Founding Fathers of the United States"

"National Rifle Association"

"This comments might be strong, but it's how I genuinely feel. I don't care that you are christian. I don't care what the Bible says. Like, I feel like it's a clown show, like sitting here, trying to decifer what your little mythical book has to say about these very real political issues, right? I don't care if you are christian. In fact, I will fight for you to have your religious liberty and practice your christianity. I believe in that. I don't believe in christianity, which means that you do not get to dictate the way I live my life based on your religion. I don't care what the Bible says. You have every right in the world, all those women who identify with your religion have every right in the world to not get an abortion, to not take birth control, but they do not have the right to dictate my life and what I decide to do with my body. I don't care about your goddamn religion! I am so tired of having nonstop conversations about what the Bible says. You live your life in the way that you intepret the Bible. Again, I don't care. You don't get to take the Bible and tell me: "Well, the Bible says this, in this chapter, in this verse". I don't care. I don't care, I don't believe in it, and I have the right, based on our Constitution, to not believe in it. (5 November 2018)"

"Co-workers looking at the leaked nudes from the hacking scandal while I judge them."

"San Francisco is terrifying. And it’s hilarious to me because the business community there wants to put lipstick on a pig. They want to put out this $4 million ad campaign pretending as though everything in San Francisco is all hunky-dory. It’s not hunky-dory. San Francisco is a nightmare."

"But you know what else is ineffective? Using taxpayer’s money, funneling it to non-profits so they can literally buy crack pipes and hand them out at Skid-Row… So, anyone on the left who wants to come at me and pretend like this is just a right-wing scare-mongering talking point, you’re full of crap."

"We spent $13 billion in Los Angeles alone last year to combat homelessness. You want to know where that money went? That money went to these trash non-profits who have a bunch of executives making half a million dollars a year. You are running a non-profit dealing with homelessness. That’s my money. That’s my parents’ money. Okay. That is the hard-working people of California paying incredibly high taxes that go to what?"

"So, yeah, I am sick of it. I am sick of it. And honestly, just experiencing what I have seen on the ground in California has made me question a lot about left-wing ideology."

"If you don't love life you can't enjoy an oyster"

""It can't happen here" is number one on the list of famous last words."

"I don’t know if I have two weeks left of life or 10 years, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do with the time. If you sit there on your butt and worry about dying, then you fucking wasted it. I haven’t been wasting it. I’m having a really good time, and feeling wonderfully about it. Sooner or later, something is going to break. Right now, my life is pretty great."

"(By this time, David Crosby had “discovered” you singing in a club in Coconut Grove, Florida. What was he like back then?) He was tanned. He was straight. He was clearing out his boat, and it was going to be the beginning of a new life for him. He was paranoid about his hair, I remember. Having long hair in a short hair society. He had a wonderful sense of humor. Crosby has enthusiasm like no one else. He can make you feel like a million bucks. Or he can bring you down with the same force. Crosby, in producing that first album, did me an incredible service, which I will never forget. He used his success and name to make sure my songs weren’t tampered with to suit the folk-rock trend."

"I think there are elements of the playwright in every play they write – it’s hard to completely disassociate from your characters and their given circumstances when you are the person creating it all…"

"The burqa has different meanings for many women who wear it. I think as Americans we have a tendency to only associate this garment with violence, oppression, and fear without really knowing much about its history or cultural significance. It is my hope that audience members will approach this play with an open mind and an open heart to allow for an alternate perspective that is both positive and meaningful."

"Being a playwright —especially in this current climate— is a privilege; I believe that as artists we have a responsibility to share narratives that we often don’t hear about or expect. When you subvert the status quo and reveal the truth in universality, you can spark change…"

"I know it’s a good play if I’m afraid to show it to my grandmother."

"I think that when you’re a teen, you can be overwhelmed with change. You’re expected to be ready for adulthood, to know what you want to do with the rest of your life, to have mature relationships. But it’s only been like 2.5 years since you had braces, or got your period, or stopped playing with Barbies! So I think it’s easy to retreat into apathy and fear and to not try. Because trying means you can fail and be embarrassed—and those are two things that are literally the worst when you’re in high school…"

"The character doesn’t have to be exactly like them, but as an author you have to give something to the reader that shows the vulnerability and where the character’s coming from…You can have characters do awful things, but you make them relatable or have some kind of backstory that makes their actions, even if it’s not excusable, understandable…"

"I don’t think California is perfect by any means. I’m sure there are a lot of people being oppressed here and not getting a fair shake. But I just feel like maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the location on the coast with access to all of Asia coming in and the strong immigrant communities here, that makes it different…I feel like in the East Coast, that’s still a thing in certain classes. That said, there are a lot of wealthy people here in California. There’s definitely segregation and classes in Los Angeles…"

"There are so many stories to tell — we’re just as varied in experiences as white men, and it doesn’t look like people are sick of those stories yet. And I’m lucky enough to be in a position to tell these stories and share them."

"…The reason I write the plays is to open up some sort of dialogue or just to have this in the conversation. I mean what I would love is to have the guy—the Republican who thinks that the only issue is keeping brown people away—he is my ideal audience. That's who I would love to have in the audience. So I get a little bit tripped up because, on one hand, I want plays that my family can go to. You don't have to be an artistic person. You can go in and actually get something from it."

"…With theatre, I’m attracted to stories of social or political relevance to the world we all live together in… With film or TV, I approach them much more as an audience member—stories I’d like to see…"

"…what I’ve learned about it throughout the years is that it’s my way of giving voice to the often voiceless; I write mostly about the sort of people on the opposite end of flush, and so when I hear them speak in this kinda jagged form of poetry, it moves me in a way I can’t even really describe. Technically speaking, some actors sing it beautifully, others can’t wrap their minds around it."

"…I like the word impressionistic more than experimental for some reason. I think experimental, I think of abstract language met with geometric stage gestures, while my writing tends to be worlds and people that we know and recognize, but the rules have changed on them. And on us, the audience, but the struggle is that I want the audiences to not spend time trying to figure out the rules, rather to accept them and see what it means to them as the world unfolds."

"Marketing is finding women who like sex or would like to find out if they do. Sales is convincing them that they want to go home with YOU, right NOW."

"It was on one of those terrible, fever-clouded days when the serpent beneath southern California awoke. It stretched from slumber, shedding its skin, the screams of its wrath heard in the shriek of tortured steel, of splintering wood and concrete. Maxine was torn from her slumber by the moans of the dying and the awful sound of her ramshackle apartment shifting on its foundations. “Earthquake!” She pulled herself from the bed, stumbled from her building into the street, and watched the lurching structures and snapping powerlines, the buckling sidewalks and exploding water mains, as a seismic debt long outstanding came due."

"The price of chemical ecstasy was a dear one, paid in flesh and spirit."

"“Chicken?” “Don’t want my feathers ruffled, it that’s what you mean.”"

"And your life is ruined because you tried to do the Right Thing. Join the club honey—guess what, there are a few more of us out here who’ve had our brains beaten our with our own dreams."

"I’m damned tired of being needed. Being needed is just the flip side of being royally screwed."

"“You know, it isn’t that you can’t get information in electronic form, or microfilm, or disk, or cube, or any of the other forms—tape, holographic computer feed.” He paused. “Tell me, Aubry—what’s the similarity between all the modes of information storage I’ve just named?” Aubry scratched his head. “They don’t take up as much space as books, I guess.” “Yes, that’s true enough—but as far as I’m concerned, the difference is that they all require an external power source.” He cocked his head sideways, until he looked absurdly like a bird examining a piece of fruit. “Do you understand that that makes you dependent upon others?” Promise ran her hands over the spines of a nearby stack, then shook her head. “Not cubes. There are plenty of solar-powered cube-readers. One sunny day a week, and you’re set.” “True enough, but you are still dependent upon others to repair your viewer if it breaks down...the more advanced a technology, the more fragilely inter-dependent it is.” “So what?” Warrick shrugged. “It just seems to me that the most valuable thing that any human has is the ability to educate himself, to find out about the world around him, to program his primary organ of perception—his brain. And that basic, inalienable right should be as independent of external factors as possible. Once a book is printed and acquired, it’s yours. Nothing else is needed except a pair of eyes and daylight. Individual books have lasted for hundreds of year—do you really think you can say the same of your little viewers, or computers, or whatever? If you have a hundred libraries stored on cube, and your viewer breaks down, you have nothing. Give me an encyclopedia, and if it isn’t totally destroyed by fire, I can dig it out, dry it off, piece it together, and still have something of value.” His gaze became direct, and piercing. “There is nothing more important than directing the flow of information into your mind. It determines all—your attitudes, your actions, your life. You can rely upon the visual and audible media all you want—but they should be in addition to reading, not in place of it. If other forms replace reading, then your input is restricted, and much more dependent upon other people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart.” “So, that’s the most important thing you can think of in life? Reading?” Warrick sighed. “You are being obstinate, my friend. You learn if you learn.”"

"Hate comes from the past, fear from the future. Pain and pleasure are now, and therefore their own trap."

"Definitions are just words, just labels. And once you label something, the label gets between you and the thing."

"“Don’t be afraid of dying. A Warrior lives with death, Aubry. Welcome it as an ally. All other fears are just fragments of death, forms of unbecoming. A fighter clings to life, and therefore cannot win. A warrior treats life and death as the same thing, and therefore cannot lose.”"

"The world doesn’t give a damn what we feel or want. Only what we are, and what we do."

"“It’s bigger than death, Aubry.” “You’re wrong,” he said, his voice utterly chill. “Nothing is bigger than death.”"

"Aubry looked at her without shifting his head. Damn, she was lovely. An unpleasant question remained: What where they to each other? It was hard to say sometimes. Did he truly feel love, or just the effects of the Cyloxibin mushroom? And was there a difference?"

"Lesbianism is the ultimate expression of a feminist philosophy."

"He had no choice. And that one thing turned Heaven into Hell."

"“Cynical bastard, aren’t you?” “Every man is a mirror,” Nozawa said flatly. “We all reflect what we see.”"

"No man escapes Death. So Death must not be the enemy. Life must not be the prize. It must be the gameboard, on which Death teaches its savage lessons. You could heed those lessons, or ignore them, but never evade them. Death, then, was the ally. Not to be sought, but heeded."

"It would have been a terrible thing to die a fool and a liar. Truth, at any cost, is worth the price."

"Truth could not be spawned in lies and deceit."

"“That was what we were told. It doesn’t entirely ring true.” “Why not?” “Because the President of the United States is always bound by the deals that he makes to get to his position. Delacourte can’t make any kinds of drastic changes, regardless of what he claims. The chief executive isn’t an emperor.”"

"God just put a love for it inside of me, I love telling stories, drawing and painting. Animation is a fairly solitary art form. But what happens when you sit in a theater with an audience and you hear their audible responses to your work—the crying, the laughter—there is nothing like it. I just love storytelling. I am a ham actor with a pencil. I love performing on canvas or on paper or right now on a digital screen."

"Once you create the show you are always its creator, no matter how many other versions are produced."

"He was always charming and gracious, and willing to give any harebrained scheme of mine a fair hearing before saying, “You’re nuts, Buzz.” He was without question one of the nicest people I’ve ever met -- and it’s been my privilege to have met and worked with a lot of super-nice people."

"When you abandon God, the only thing left is yourself, and when you remove God from the equation, what is the reason for any altruism, any sense of the other? How do I really care for people if I do not believe in a God? The whole approach of a secular culture and liberal culture is to focus on my own pleasure and what’s in it for me. So we see young people very easily moving in and out of relationships, without much thought or meaning, and then they cannot understand why they are so unhappy."

"I like to challenge the faithful to grow in holiness and become saints. When I give a confirmation homily to children, I ask them, “Are you called to be saints?” It is amazing that a number of them say no. The adults in attendance look stunned by the question. I then tell them we are all called to holiness, and we are all called to be saints. Vatican II teaches this; Christ tells us this in the Gospels."

"We may be the first generation that instead of sacrificing for our kids, we’re sacrificing their future with an inheritance of debt."

"We've seen what Big Government looks like. No one would have thought that the IRS would turn against the American people, and yet here we are. We must always be vigilant and guarded against the overreach of power."

"I’m grateful that I have faith that provides perspective. This is important work, but I always have to remember that there is even a higher calling: serving God. We serve our country, but ultimately I serve God in what I do day to day. It would be difficult to serve here without being grounded in faith."

"I just think it’s funny that a couple of logical tweets have made me a “conservative,” such a strong label. I don’t even know what it means to be conservative, or what a conservative is anymore. I feel like the meanings of these labels are changing. I certainly would never have called myself a conservative."

"Is our universe fundamentally a mess, or is there some simple and natural structure that all this could emerge from, or be parts of? One approach to answering these questions is String Theory (or, more generally, M-Theory), but string unification models have grown excessively in complexity while producing zero predictive progress. After several decades of extensive theoretical exploration leading nowhere, it is time to consider that the string program may have been a wrong turn. If we backtrack, imagining String Theory never happened, we can go in a new direction, building on the success of Grand Unified Theories and recent progress in Loop Quantum Gravity. The structures of GUTs and LQG rely heavily on Lie groups and are remarkably compatible. By considering the known Lie groups and fields of physics as parts of a larger geometric whole, we move towards Lie group unification."

"I think that, without experimental checks, physics can — and has — gone off the rails ... experiment has to be the ultimate decider of what is good physics."

"For almost a decade, Lisi moved on no fixed schedule between Maui, where he likes to surf, and the mountains of the West, where he snowboards. Four years ago, Lisi persuaded his girlfriend, Crystal Baranyk, who is an artist, to move with him into an old Colorado ski-shuttle van; he remodelled it himself, shipped it to Maui, and parked it by the beach. They lived in the van for a year, with no toilet. He worked intermittently, sometimes as a snowboard instructor, once on a short-term consulting contract when a friend’s software company needed an algorithm solved, but mostly he tried to think about physics."

"Back then, he admits, his theory still had some shortcomings; for example the three generations of fermions didn't quite come out right. But this was in 2007. In the years since, Garrett has solved some of the remaining puzzles. Still, his masterpiece is unfinished, not yet to his full satisfaction."

"Seeking out help is never a weakness. Whether that's just phoning a friend or finding a therapist or starting to read up on things on the internet or in books. Sometimes we think that means we can't help ourselves, that it's a bad thing, but it's not. It's just becoming more self-aware, and I think that that's a really amazing gift to give yourself."

"Let us in our own day and age, in this 21st century become witnesses to the resurrection. There are a million ways to do that, but we essentially do that by bearing in our heart an unquenchable joy. And we carry that, maybe, in the depth of our heart when life gets tough, and it’s been tough, and when life gets overwhelming, and it’s been overwhelming, when we have experienced tragedy, and we have. There is always in the depth of our heart a measure of joy that can only come from Jesus himself, that can only come from the assurance that he has been raised from the dead."

"The studios really don’t care very much about the individual artists – they just want to get the shots for the right price. I don’t think that’s an artform that’s based on artistry or passion or vision, or anything, it’s just a commodity, a production line."

"It would make no sense whatsoever to say, "Well, we shouldn’t honor Catholics who present the antithesis of our Catholic doctrine, but there’s really no problem whatsoever provided the person’s not a Catholic," that evades common sense."

"Christ has infinite patience with us. When we have doubts and fears, He never stops reaching out to us with his love. He wants us to love Him back, he wants us to trust him completely. We sometimes lack faith because the realities of the world press in on us: a financial situation, a job situation, a difficulty in the family, and other factors. When these concerns cloud our hearts, we begin to lose the clear vision of faith that frees us. Trust Christ! Have faith! Do not be afraid to trust Christ completely, offering Him your worries and fears, your joys and hopes. Jesus, I trust in you! This is the great exclamation of the Church. It is only through trust that you will begin to experience the depths of Christ's love for you. And when you begin to experience this love, deeply and profoundly in your lives, you cannot help but see the world around you differently."

"The animation can go anywhere, and the music has to go with it. What is especially great from a composer's point of view is that the music in these shows gets featured, not buried; these shows appreciate the value of what the music is doing."

"I feel it is really different to be there at a show. It is such a great feeling and I hope that doesn’t die with the Internet as so many other things have. Go out, support those bands, have a beer, listen to some live music and don’t forget about it!"

"I do feel like I’ve been fortunate to step into these roles that exemplify young women stepping into their power in the sense of owning who they are and making a change in the world. [The people I represent] might not necessarily know it was through their example, but as the actress I now see that I was somehow able to be a role model by living that character’s story. Not every single part is that extraordinary where I get to do that. I also like to play roles that are super fun and wacky, but it feels good to be able to have that variety and step into a place of empowerment."

"Jihad is the secret these investigators are keeping, but only from themselves. It drives the murder spree against infidel troops. It also is part of the culture that renders U.S. utopian plans to train an Afghan army and police force dead on arrival. Not saying so doesn't make it go away. It just wastes the lives of our people. Does anyone care?"

"We know what identity politics does -- it divides, and it polarizes. No matter how you want to look at it, that's just the effect of it no matter how great the intentions are. We all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

"I've found that there are three types of games that pique my interest: games I want to make, games I want to have made, and games I'm good at making. [...] The ideas with the most potential (to be finished, at least) fall into all three categories and also satisfy the requirement "I have the time and resources to actually make this"."

"Feeling stuck? Push forward. Start working on the next level, the next enemy, the next whatever. Not only is it helpful for motivational purposes, but you want to get a sense for how your whole game will play out. Just like writing— you don't want to go through it sentence by sentence, making sure every sentence is perfect before you move on. Get an outline down."

"The most important thing to know about video game development and schooling is that no one, whether it's an indie studio or big company, cares about degrees. How could it, when some of its most prominent members are drop-outs or never-beens?"

"A degree is a piece of paper that says you can do something in theory— game developers want to know that you have enough passion to do real work, regardless of whether you're being graded on it. And if you're thinking of going indie, it won't matter what other people think— you'll simply need that passion to succeed or else you won't."

"The key to making a challenging game that's not frustrating is to give the player all of the tools that they need to overcome the challenge— and never make it the game's fault that they lost. [...] Roguelikes give you lots of those tools, so even though they're really tough, it's always fun."

"I think my word is "flow" for game design, because I think you want your game to flow, and I think you want your game development process to flow. To me, that means everything starting from a central idea, and then layering on top of that to have a very coherent experience. I think if you develop games that way, [it'll come across] to the players, and they'll have a similar experience that's really smooth."

"That's a type of game that I really like, is one that grows on you a lot over time, and your understanding of it feels like it's on an exponential curve. I just hope that enough people are willing to give [Spelunky] a chance, [who may] not be used to that."

"When it comes down to it, I feel like art should never be compromised for any reason— especially not to satisfy a certain group of people. [...] There was no compromise for Spelunky."

"That's how you make [a] game feel truly alive: you cut out the mundane stuff! [...] I think this pursuit of "realism" to make games feel more immersive— it's kind of a dead end."

"I like that in general: just having a little bit of unpredictability in each level. And I really like dense level design with a lot going on. I think for this level, the message that I want to convey is "Find peace through hell". And that's kind of my design philosophy in general."

"My worry is that as players we've grown too comfortable with being comfortable. We revel in being consumers of products, rather than contributors to a rapidly-evolving art form. [...] We've gone from asking "How does this game play?" to asking, "Does this game play the way I want it to play?""

"We can't know what to expect and also be surprised. We can't be free from frustration and also be challenged. We can't go unchallenged and also feel satisfied with our accomplishments. Mystery, surprise, tension, challenge, and a real sense of accomplishment always come at the cost of feeling uncomfortable. Given the opportunity, many of us would rather take the easier road, but that's usually the less rewarding one."

"The best games come out of a mutual respect between the creator and the player. The player does not demand a certain experience from the creator because they trust in the creator's expertise and because they want to be surprised. A personal creative vision cannot bloom without the freedom afforded by that trust. At the same time, creators must trust in the curiosity and abilities of their players. Continuously interrupting play to steer players with direct text messages and other obvious hints not only infantilizes them, but it also reveals the creator's insecurity in their ability to design games."

"The "joy of discovery" is one of the fundamental joys of play itself. Not just the joy of discovering secrets within the game, but also the joy of uncovering the creator's vision. It's that "Aha!" moment where it all makes sense, and behind the world the player can feel the touch of another creative mind. In order for it to be truly joyful, however, it must remain hidden from plain view— not carved as commandments into stone tablets but revealed, piece by piece, through the player's exploration of the game's rules."

"I often compare the process of finding and working with teammates to dating. In any big project, you're not just looking for a set of artistic and technical skills to fit your own, you're also looking for someone who shares your creative vision, who communicates well, and who will be as passionate and dedicated about the project as you are in the long run. [...] Ultimately, if you're planning on releasing a commercial video game, you are looking for "marriage material"— a committed, stable partner you can get along with for a long time."

"I'm obsessed with finishing as a skill. Over the years, I've realized that so many of the good things that have come my way are because I was able to finish what I started. [...] Irrespective of how big the project was, each one I finished gave something back to me, whether it was new fans, a new benchmark for what I could accomplish, or new friends [whom] I could work with and learn from."

"The more I play and create games, the less convinced I am that the difficulty of games should be thought of in terms of a linear or exponential ramp upwards where, as the player gets stronger, you need to make the opposition increase proportionally in strength. [...] While some form of escalation certainly feels good in a challenging game, [there's] something futile and perhaps nihilistic about endlessly cranking a single knob that goes from easy to hard. Rather, I believe it makes more sense to think about difficulty in terms of the game's overall pacing. Difficulty should ebb and flow, and make room for other aspects of play."

"Now that Spelunky is done, what I feel most of all is a sense that I'm part of an even bigger puzzle that includes the people [who] influenced me, the players who play Spelunky, and whomever Spelunky has influenced in turn. [...] In the end, isn't that why we create things? Not just for the power of putting something into existence, but to connect with people and be part of the conversation that is human history. To have something that speaks for us when we're not speaking and even after we're gone."

"To make a world feel really real and immersive, you have to take a step back. And you have to try not to guide the player so much — and show them everything — because that is the fun part about games— discovering things on [your] own, making [your] own mistakes. That's what gives the games meaning. When I feel like someone has their hand on my shoulder, and they're just pushing me around, I feel like I'm losing a lot of the meaning of games, which is that joy of discovery."

"One of the most fun things about games is learning. It's learning the game and getting that knowledge for yourself about this little world. The only way you can really do that is by figuring it out yourself. If the game tells me something before I get a chance to learn it myself: 1) that's really annoying, but 2) it robs [me] of that experience."

"Everything in Spelunky was designed with a similar sensibility, where we're trying to draw out the personality of each area, of each monster, from very simple actions and things that they do. And when they all come together, you get this complexity that's very interesting, and that makes every time you play in this randomized environment fun— because you start to see — over time — all the different patterns that can arise. [...] That's the emergent gameplay that comes out of it."

"I tend to think about my life in terms of games. "This is the Aquaria point of my life." "This is the Spelunky point of my life." As to what [Spelunky] actually represents — what does that time mean to me — I think: coming more into my own, as a game developer, and figuring out how it was I want to work exactly. I feel like I learned a lot with Aquaria, and I'm super proud of that game, but Spelunky was where I feel like I hit my stride."

"As game designers, we naturally gravitate towards order, because we create rules, and we create systems, and we create structure. And those are all things that belong to this idea of order. [...] And so, I think it makes complete sense that as game designers, we would embrace order, and we would be very attracted to things like "balance", things like "elegance" in game design. [But] more recently — and maybe a big part of this is my experience with Spelunky — I've started to rethink that a little bit. And I've started to think more about chaos as the defining trait of game design. Or at least that's something that really appeals to me right now— this idea that we're not creating these ordered systems, but we're creating chaos for the player to find order in."

"This is a straight-up religious problem: the idea of the player and the developer. Because I think [for] some developers, creating a game, it's a little universe— they don't want to be a part of that universe. They want the player to play and just experience the universe as created, and not be involved. And then, I think there are other developers [who] do want you to know "Hey— I designed this! My fingerprints are all over this." And then, there are players [who] I think want to play games basically as the "atheists" of that game world— where they want to just experience the world as-is, with all of its flaws and all of its ugly warts. And then, there are players who play, and because they know that there is a designer behind all of it, they want to basically pray to that deity of the universe to change it for them! [...] I think it has to do with fundamental differences in the way different designers want their game to be experienced, and also fundamental differences between different players and how they want to treat that relationship between the player of the game world and the designer."

"The business model of arcades— I don't know how it will be replicated ever again, but it created such an interesting category of games, just based on the unique features of it. And I think it's one of the few places where the business model of the arcades really forced this type of design that was— I call it "lean and explosive". [I say] "lean" because you have to push players along to the interesting parts of the game as quickly as possible. And you just don't see that in modern gaming and modern game development. [...] And I say "explosive" because they don't save anything for the end. The experiences are quite short: to play through an arcade game, it's 30 minutes to an hour, tops, for the longer arcade games. And you don't want to save anything for the end because players are renting the game a quarter at a time. And so, starting with Stage 1, you've got to put it all out on the table, while still — in the later parts of the game — giving people something to look forward to. And I think that has been very influential on Spelunky 1 and 2, and it's just a type of design I really enjoy."

"There's a certain glee [among game developers like Bennett and me] from players feeling frustrated and disappointed. And it's not because we dislike players. It's actually because we really care about players, and these are emotions that you need to feel to have a well-rounded human experience in a video game."

"That might be the core of game design to me— making connections from every part of the game to every other part of the game. [...] I think it's been really fun to be able to do Spelunky Classic, Spelunky HD, and now, Spelunky 2. And it really feels to me like seeing the evolution of a lot of our favorite childhood franchises and seeing how they've grown up, and being inspired by that."

"I've started to think of myself, personally, as a "work in progress" that will never reach completion— but in order to keep progressing, I have to release games. [...] You're releasing a game, but you yourself are not "done". And so, I think that takes some of the pressure off for me— to think about things that way. And in general— to think about art and life as this cyclic thing, because you're going to keep going and make more things, so just put out what you've got and do the best you can. It's not a final judgment of you, as a person and an artist, when you release a game."

"The best metric for scoping a project is not technical skill, but the scope of the previous games you've finished!"

"This won't be your only chance to say something through your art. It's not even your only chance to relay this exact idea— after all, finishing a game doesn't mean you [can't] remake it later (or put out a sequel)! My advice is to abandon the goal of making an objectively great game. Instead, focus on making the best game you can at the time and find joy in your personal growth."

"I want people to play around with [Spelunky 2] and not focus so much on "beating" it. I think it's a difficult concept for people to wrap their head[s] around. [...] It is a hard game, but the challenge is really just a backdrop for people to play and experiment."

"A lot of design decisions that end up having a big effect on the gameplay start as thematic decisions. [...] It's like in chess, how the knight is the only piece that jumps, and that just makes sense-- you're on a horse, and the horse can leap. Those kinds of links-- they're things that game developers think about a lot, and it's not just a bunch of abstract rules. It matters what the game is about story-wise, character-wise, et cetera."

"I think about making art, in general, as a dialogue. That's what it is, in the end— you're expressing yourself, and your audience gets their chance to express themselves. And especially with video games — it being interactive and it being software — it really is a continuing conversation— very directly now, and very literally. [...] In this moment, it is a conversation, as well as being this long-running conversation throughout history."

"No matter how built up you are [in any Spelunky game] and how powerful you are, there is always that slight chance that it could all be over. It's exciting. It's not done enough in games— especially in modern games. [...] Real life is a huge inspiration for me, in terms of how real life works. We're trying to move towards "realism" in terms of graphics and things like that, but it's stuff like instant deaths that I think are more connected to real life from an interactive standpoint, which is what games are all about."

"The instant kill is like an exclamation point on the end of a run."

"The instant death— it's like a punchline to this joke, where the joke is really just the tension of being in this dangerous situation. [...] The fact that when [a run] ends, it's instantaneous, I think is very humorous. And it's this nice release, in some sense. It's frustrating, but it's also a release— and it creates this pregnant pause afterwards, where you can really think about what happened."

"Ultimately, that's what makes the most interesting game that we can make— if it's not just what players are expecting or what players want the game to be. [...] I would like people to feel strongly about it. I think that's the most important thing for me— whether it's love it, or not like it, or have conflicting feelings about certain parts of the game. I want the game to have its own personality, and that personality is the personality of the team making it."

"Video games are an artform that's so limitless. In making a game, a big part of the process is putting these limiters on the game itself, so you can actually finish. And I think feedback is a great way to figure out what those limiters should be. It's a way to scope and rescope your game."

"Miyamoto and Tezuka, at least when they were designing the early Mario games— I've seen interviews where they describe the genre that Mario is in — and that they're working in — not as platformers but as "athletic games". [...] When I read that, that really changed the way I saw these games— and I feel like it captures the spirit of them much better than "platformer". Even the platformers that Mario has inspired afterwards don't feel as much like "athletic games" [as] the Mario series itself. And one of the iconic Mario songs by Koji Kondo is called "Athletic Theme", which plays into that."

"Mario made more sense to me, thinking about it as an "athletic game". Even little details like Charging Chuck— there are just random sports characters that are in the Mario universe. And the fact that — at the end of a Super Mario World level — there's that bar that goes up and down, and you're trying to hit it— it kind of feels like hurdles. The fact that there is a timer in the game. [...] It all comes together to make each Mario level feel almost like a race where you can also explore."

"Spiky games are often thought of as "punishing", but the difficulty — while it's an important part of the design ethos — is in service of the goal, rather than the goal itself. The real goal is to put the player in a state of focus about the game— and to really care about what they're doing at any given moment. [...] Winning or finishing the game is not the main goal of a spiky game, even if that's ultimately what [the player is] working toward."

"Unsurprisingly, not everybody likes spiky games! [They're] like bitter or spicy food— [they're] an acquired taste that you have to build up. [...] It can be hard for people who don't like spicy food to understand why spicy-food fans love it so much. If you're just starting out on your spicy-food journey, you can't taste the flavor— just the heat and the pain. Similarly, spiky games generate a lot of enthusiasm from their fans, but for people who aren't there yet, they can just seem hard."

"Not that there's anything wrong with wanting challenge for the sake of challenge, but it does make things that much more confusing when people are trying to evaluate spiky games. Again: the difficulty is only one part of the equation— it's the "heat" part of spicy food. I don't eat spicy food to feel pain, but the pain wakes me up— and it's the gateway to interesting flavors that you can't find anywhere else. The flavor is what makes spicy food good, and it gets easier and easier to withstand the heat the more you experience it."

"I focus as much on the process of making games as the games themselves, because I have the experience now to know how hard game-making is at any level. I don't just make a game because I want to make the game; I make it because it's also the right time to make it and the right people are around to help me make it. I never assume that a game is going to get made out of sheer will. A lot of the decisions that you make in the conceptual phase will either help you or haunt you, once the development starts."

"If you don’t have a relationship with Our Lord, and are not responding to what you believe to be His call, it will be a dry life. It's important that a priest have common sense. It's important he know how to relate to people, to be able to socialize and engage in their lives. People need to know that their priests care about them, and are willing to help them. We’re all in this life together, and if we live out our faith, it will end well for us all in eternal life. The priesthood is not an easy life, but if it is something God is calling you to, he'll give you the grace to live out your vocation well."

"While some bishops may travel with someone to help with the driving, I go by myself. I prefer it that way. I like the solitude. I don't listen to music. I pray and say the Rosary, or think about things. It gives me a lot of time to myself. Not everyone would like it."

"For me, the legacy is priceless. Bela Lugosi is an icon and he represents the beginnings of the horror genre and classic Hollywood. His portrayal of Dracula – his make-up and costume, his mannerisms, his voice – have become the benchmark for all other portrayals and caricatures. I believe my father's face and name will always be synonymous with Dracula and horror films, making him a part of film history worldwide. It is my wish that the stewards of the legacy will continue to be the descendants of Bela Lugosi."

"When my mom took my friends and me to see dad's movies, they would be scared, but to me, it was just my dad on the screen. When I moved back to Los Angeles, I was in the middle of the ninth grade. So I was pretty much a Los Angeles resident from the time I was fourteen, fifteen years old. While I was in high school, I didn't want so much attention; I'd rather keep a low profile."

"I've gone by Bela G. Lugosi or Bela Lugosi Jr. most of my life and am proud of it, of course. Hardly a day has gone by that someone hasn't recognized the name. But people are very nice, although some even still think I'm actually my father."

"I was not overly enthusiastic about appearing in court. The goal of both the courts and science is to discover the truth, but the methods of the two are so different that it is difficult for most scientists to enter the legal arena with any degree of confidence. Finally, there was a natural reluctance, common to most scientists, to spend any time dealing with nonsense; the tenets of “scientific” creationism are so absurd that it seems most appropriate simply to ignore them."

"The creationist “scientific” arguments for a young Earth are absurd, I and other authors have dealt with them at length elsewhere, and they do not merit further attention here."

"Estimates of the age of the Earth made prior to about 1950, biblical or otherwise, are all wrong, because they were based on methods now known to be invalid."

"Biblical chronologies are historically important, but their credibility began to erode in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when it became apparent to some that it would be more profitable to seek a realistic age for the Earth through observation of nature than through a literal interpretation of parables. Today, scientists and biblical scholars alike agree that science is the proper arena in which to seek the numerical age of the Earth."

"Invoking unique, supernatural, or extraordinary causes to explain natural history was to Buffon both unnecessary and unproductive."

"If two or more radiometric clocks running at different rates give the same age, this is powerful evidence that the ages are correct."

"There is incontrovertible evidence from lead-isotopic data that meteorites are approximately 4.55 ± 0.02 Ga. We can presume, as the evidence indicates, that the solid bodies of the Solar System formed nearly simultaneously, and conclude that the Pb-Pb age of meteorites also represents the age of Earth."

"These calculations result in ages for the Earth of 4.52 to 4.56 Ga. Probably the best value is 4.54 Ga, found by (Fouad) Tera using the congruency point of the four oldest conformable lead ores. Its value, which is known to within 1% or better, is consistent with the ages of meteorites, the ages of the oldest lunar samples, and the ages of the oldest Earth rocks."

"Our current understanding of the chronology of the universe, Galaxy, and Solar System represents the fulfillment of a quest that required more than two centuries of endeavor and surely is one of the most notable and spectacular achievements of modern science."

"My dream is to lead. I speak fluent Italian, English and Spanish and I am studying Russian. From the point of view of the feelings and the path, I was burned because I went out there with a person who was not interested in me. I would be afraid of relapsing again. I don't know if I would be able to trust another person again but above all I would no longer want to have a television relationship."

"After a sentimental burn I had decided to participate but without wanting to tie myself to anyone. As then happened to me with Jeremias, you never know what awaits us."

"Known of the respectability on the part of everyone. I've always been called the villain of reality because unfortunately I'm one of the few real ones. When I think of something, I expose it, regardless of whether it may later please the public."

"The crypto bros are spending tens of millions in Washington to make sure this industry is regulated as lightly as possible, ... There are no lobbyists or PACs dedicated to preventing tax evasion, sanctions evasion, and the other forms of illicit finance that cryptocurrency enables,"

"I would like to thank Bangladesh for providing shelters to thousands of Rohingyas. I want to reiterate that if Myanmar government is reluctant to establish good governance to save its Rohingya community, if they do not want to provide security to the Rohingya people living at the northern parts of Rakhine state or unable to do so then the Rohingya majority area of the State should incorporate with Bangladesh. And US should support to annex Rakhine to Bangladesh that is also a demand for the people of the area. Rohingyas want to stay with such a government who will work cordially to save them instead of killing."

"If I could only pick one game, I would pick Phantasmagoria, as I enjoyed working on it immensely and it was so very challenging (and I love to be challenged!). However, in my heart, I will always love the King's Quest series and, especially, King's Quest, I since it was the game that really 'made' Sierra On-Line."

"I just couldn’t stop. It was compulsive. I started playing it and kept playing. I had a baby at the time, [who] was eight-months old; I totally ignored him. I didn’t want to be bothered. I didn’t want to stop and make dinner."

"Programmers, authors are going to be the future new entertainers ... It might be presumptuous to say they might be new Robert Redfords ... but to a certain extent [they will be] idolized. Tomorrow's heroes."

"Subsidiarity is one of our traditional Catholic social principles. The idea is that the responsibility be carried out at the lowest level possible. But that principle does not excuse those in higher positions from taking care of their responsibilities. You cannot use the principle of subsidiarity to say that government does not have a responsibility to those in need."

"9 years ago today, I finished a flight around the world in a single engine airplane. Today, I’m thrilled to release the book about that very flight. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s my sincere hope you connect with the stories and ideas I’ve shared within it in a meaningful way,” she posted on Instagram. “The book is available on Amazon and I’ve linked to it in my bio. Blue skies and thank you ALL for your support and encouragement through the years as I’ve worked toward this huge goal!”"

"Learn to Love the Turbulence.”"

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself,' she told USA Today. 'Whatever your version of flying is - it could be starting a business, it could be something entrepreneurial - we want to encourage people to pursue their own adventure.""

"“wanted me to have a name nobody would forget.”"

"There hasn't been a day in my life that somebody hasn't said something to me about Amelia Earhart. It's a daily connection,”"

"“People would always ask, 'Are you a pilot? Are you a pilot?'""

"In the last 24 hours, new information from a team of researchers that I hired shows that while I share a name and a passion for flying with Amelia Earhart, we are not from the same family," said Rose Earhart. "While my family and Amelia's did settle in nearby counties in the same state, the only thing we shared was our last name.”"

"Today, I’m thrilled to release the book about that very flight," Earhart said. "It’s been a long time coming, and it’s my sincere hope you connect with the stories and ideas I’ve shared within it in a meaningful way.""

"Blue skies and thank you all for your support and encouragement through the years as I’ve worked toward this huge goal!""

"We're ready to go," Earhart said early Thursday morning. "I was destined to do this.""

"adventure is worthwhile in itself" and the younger Earhart said it is "that type of attitude that spurs us to seek the unknown, push our limits and fly outside the lines."

"the whole reason she does what she does is to propel the future of women who will fly tomorrow’s airplanes," the younger Amelia Earhart said. "That’s me. I’m flying tomorrow’s planes.”"

"While my family and Amelia's did settle in nearby counties in the same state, the only thing we shared was our last name,"

""In the last 24 hours, new information from a team of researchers that I hired shows that while I share a name and a passion for flying with Amelia Earhart, we are not from the same family," says Earhart, a news traffic reporter for the NBC affiliate in Denver, Gannett-owned KUSA 9News. Gannett also owns USA TODAY."

"When I decided to re-create Amelia's flight around the world, it became clear that it was time to establish the exact connection between the two of us. So I hired a team of expert genealogists to finally establish the link," she says. "So my connection to Amelia isn't what I thought it was. And I'll admit, the last 24 hours, they've been really hard. It's tough to hear that something you've believed your whole life just isn't true.""

"The aircraft was old, filthy, smelled like a dusty old farm truck, and instilled zero confidence in its ability to keep my instructor and I safely in the sky. My instructor was the human version of this aircraft. Crotchety, grumpy, smelled of stale cigarette smoke was NOT impressed that my name was Amelia Earhart. I remember feeling very out of place at the airport, clueless, awkward, in the way. We did a pre-flight inspection on the plane, my instructor helped me buckle myself into the left seat of the Cessna 172 and we were off."

"I had a team of close to twenty-five people that I worked with on a daily basis to help me troubleshoot as we went, but no one was going to step in and do the work for me. Over the course of the two years leading up to the flight, I exchanged over sixteen thousand emails about flight logistics."

"I knew I was about to see, with my very own eyes, the one piece of land that Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan wanted to see with every part of their being."

"Everyone has ocean’s to fly, if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?”"

"I want my legacy to evoke an emotion of curious adventure, childishly peer into the night sky, and falling deeply in love, over and over again with the beauty of the star-splattered front seat views. I want to challenge the idea that we are bound to the Earth. I want to live by example, being the author of my life-long ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book."

"We are a Colorado based, non-profit organization that has awarded funds to close to twenty young women so far and will continue to grow, becoming a resource of scholarships, aviation resources, aerospace opportunity, and inspiration for girls who want to fly."

"Even if you are with a group of adults in their 50s and a child, we all get that overall look on our faces,"

"It's awesome and it's invigorating. (Flying is) a great joy,"

""In high school my thing was public speaking and debate," Earhart said. "Right around that 18-20 age range I was thinking about taking my first flight lesson. During that discovery flight I began to think about the possibility that aviation could take me anywhere I wanted to go."

"As a woman named Amelia Earhart I have a unique opportunity to take.""

"Unfortunately, the number of pilots that are women are low," Amelia Rose said. "It's around 6 percent. There was an influx of women becoming pilots, but we really have seen it taper off."

"The biggest challenge for me was paying for it. I wanted to eliminate the cost and find girls who are really passionate. Flying is a huge amount of responsibility. You have to be organized and work well with others and in confined spaces. It's not just about flying it's about being a well-rounded person with an adventurous side."

"We committed last year to really integrating social media into this flight," Amelia Rose said. "We are going to remote parts of the world. You will be seeing tweets from us at 30,000 feet. You haven't seen that with around the world flights.""

""The flight around the world is to honor Amelia Earhart, to trust that adventures are still out there," she said. "We may not be using the old technology that they had in the Elektra, but look at the coordination and planning behind it. I would challenge those people to create their own adventure."

"When you live life like an adventure — like Amelia did — it makes everything very exciting. It makes me feel proud. A lot of that comes down to your willingness to put in the effort and hard work."

"Maybe their family says it's not a safe option," she said. "But it's about becoming a safe operator of your machine no matter what your adventure is — even if you were trying to be a doctor."

"The flexible education experience at Laurel Springs is a great opportunity for these students and I love how they can pursue their passions while receiving a top-flight education," Earhart said. "I can't wait to share my story with these passionate students and encourage them to continue following their dreams.""

""While we recognize people are still struggling and the last two years haven't been easy, commencement is a reminder of the bright future awaiting the Class of 2022," says Megan O'Reilly Palevich, M.Ed, head of Laurel Springs School. "Remember what you've learned in your time at Laurel Springs, celebrate what you've accomplished, and always cherish the relationships birthed here. Let the lessons you learned inside our virtual walls help you set your ambitions and drive your life forward toward them."

"They're all about turbulence," she said. "As pilots, we know that turbulence is one of many sky conditions. We agree to the chance of turbulence when we take off to go up in flight ... I think if we take a pilot's perspective on how to navigate it, it can help out a lot."

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself," "I think there's a new focus on adventure that we've only seen in the last five to 10 years. But whatever your version of flying is – it could be starting a business, it could be something entrepreneurial – we want to encourage people to pursue their own adventure.""

"The feeling I have when I get up there in the airplane is unlike anything else,""

"Discovering who I’m not has led me to fully and finally understand who I really am,”. “In the last 24 hours new information from a team of researchers that I hired shows that while I share a name and a passion for flying with the first Amelia Earhart we’re not from the same family. And while I am her namesake, nothing in life is ever really as simple as we want it to be.”"

"While the news was a jolt, it DOES NOT change my commitment to the the flight or to the mission of The Fly With Amelia Foundation, which is to enable young girls to pursue their dreams of flight,""

"I am so thankful for all the encouragement and support I have received and I am really looking forward to sharing my recreation of Amelia's flight around the world with all of you.""

"“I came to it later for reasons that were mostly financial,” she said. “I worked other jobs, I worked at golf courses, I waitressed."

"It’s a lot like packing snacks for a road trip,” she said. “A lot of granola, stuff that’s high in protein. Also, Sour Patch Kids,” she admitted. “Some of these stretches of time in the air are loooooong,” she said. “One will be about nine hours.”"

"“Luckily our iPhones will be working at certain altitudes,"

"In every successful flight,” she said, “you want to open a flight plan and close a flight plan. Amelia never had the chance to close hers, and I want to do that for her.”"

"It's a very surreal feeling to walk through the doors another time, the last time coming as a citizen and this time coming in as a citizen legislator, and knowing that weight of responsibility is on your shoulders. I kind of took a pause at the door and looked in. I have this responsibility to the people who sent me here and hopefully I can do them proud."

"I think you have a genuine concern that the rule of law and the quality of life is diminishing here because of the changes that are going on around us. I think they see a vote for Trump as an opportunity to protest what they don't like... They see him as kind of a disruptor."

"When any misunderstanding is possible, spontaneous prayer that leaves no doubt about the truth of the matter according to the Church's teachings on faith and morals and no doubt about the blessing’s goal of growth in salvific holiness is the only option. What we pray is what we believe!"

"It does help if you can absolutely convince yourself that you're destined for greatness. It's not even an ego thing--it's just a way to prevent doubt and insecurity from hindering you."

"I've always been obsessed with creating stuff, I spent my spare time doodling, making music, writing... basically all the different aspects of making a game. I just didn't know at the time that I would find a way to combine all those things to bring a cohesive vision to life."

"You should be free to work yourself to the bone, but not to force someone else to do that for you."

"There’s a balance you have to have between being very critical of yourself and your work while also maintaining a strong faith in your own ability. Your unique voice and perspective matter and if you can find a way to bring that out then you will create something special."

"There is no "secret" to being successful, you just need to have great dedication and perseverance and adopt a "can do" attitude."

"My strategy with the community is simple: no strategy at all. I think that, as an indie developer, you should just be yourself and be a real human. I try to act online like I do in real life: treat everyone with respect, and be as honest and straightforward as possible."

"I think it's a lot easier to stay driven when you're doing your own project, knowing that there are no limits to how far you can go."

"I just persevered and forced myself to learn. You realize the thing that you thought was good actually isn’t. You realize why and you improve on it. And that’s just an endless cycle."

"It’s very important to me that I make good on my promises."

"Making art, making video games, is my way of sharing who I am with the world. My goal, deep down, is that I want to connect with the rest of humanity, and maybe have them connect with me in some way."

"My whole goal as a game creator is to create these moments where I want people to feel something, like actually feel this connection to something deeper than you would normally feel like in a video game. I want to go deeper, and connect with people in a real way that’s memorable, that they’ll take with them for the rest of their life. I think music is integral to that."

"I’m just making music, I’m not even thinking about what it’s for, and it gives me ideas for the game. It will make me think of a particular scenario or environment, and then I really envision it through the music and put that into the game. That’s my favourite way to develop, actually."

"Music is somehow pure, you don’t think of it in terms of symbols. It just exists, it’s like magic. It feels like a way you can almost directly interface with the transcendental or divine."

"If you’re creating music from the heart, you're basically tapping into this supernatural power."

"It all goes back to human nature and what we're meant to do as humans."

"What really makes me feel good, makes me feel like my life has been totally worthwhile, is the fact that Stardew Valley has brought such joy and happiness to people. People describe it as a therapeutic game. Because I know that this little game brings so much positivity to the world... that really feels good."

"It feels like my life has been worthwhile because of Stardew Valley, even if I were to die tomorrow. It feels good to see it manifest in new ways, and see people appreciate it."

"I want to create a collection of games during my career, so that when I’m on my deathbed I can look back and see that I created all these wonderful things that brought people joy."

"The new evangelization called for five hundred years after the first evangelization of America requires a new catechesis as its "engine", in order to provide the lay faithful with the comprehensive understanding of their faith to allow them to embrace Christ's mission of transforming the world with confidence."

"The parish is the most important element of the Church; that's where Christian Catholic life gets its source and energy."

"There's a lot of blessing, too... having cancer. That may sound awful. I mean, first of all, so many people reached out to me. Expressing their concern and their prayers for me. You don't realize how many lives you've touched until something like this happens."

"When the social and political history of Los Angeles in the late 20th century comes to be written, it’s likely that two men will stand out as fundamentally transformative leaders. One will be , the five-term mayor who changed the city’s politics and realigned its economic course; the other will be Cardinal , the Hollywood-born prelate who has led what is now America’s largest as archbishop for the last quarter-century, a post from which he will retire Sunday on his 75th birthday, as church law requires."

"One of American politics’ most comforting nostrums is the notion that we always are united by far more than what divides us. It’s a sentiment repeats frequently in his speeches, and both the president and California Gov. are relying on it to help them move toward resolution of government’s worst budgetary crisis in generations. A comprehensive new survey of the American electorate by the nonpartisan , however, indicates that the most politically engaged Americans now are fundamentally opposed to compromise, divided on virtually every basic national question and separated from each other by everything from their race to the choice of where they get their news. Moreover, the increasing numbers of independents, who’ve theoretically pushed national politics to the center with their preference for middle-of-the-road policies, no longer are particularly moderate. California has traversed this sort of political landscape for more than a decade, and now the rest of the nation seems poised to discover that it’s a difficult and discomforting place."

"The Christian worldview teaches that there is a short tether binding beliefs to the values and behaviors that flow from them. If the beliefs are false, then the behavior will eventually — but inevitably — be warped...."

"... Mr. Rutten ... really does know what he's talking about when it's come to religion ... Not to make it too intimate, too warm or friendly ... the critical thing is this: what is most important to him is most hateful to me."

"During a 40-year career, Rutten moved seamlessly across The Times’ — city bureau chief, metro reporter, editorial writer, assistant national editor, book critic and columnist. He was part of The Times’ team of journalists that won the for the paper’s coverage of the . “Original in thought and lyrical in print, his work is witty, well-reported, passionate, yet staunchly nonpartisan,” Times staff writer Thomas Curwen wrote in the paper’s 2005 Pulitzer nomination of Rutten for commentary. Rutten used his “Regarding Media” column to untangle the complexities of L.A., the nation’s s and the eccentricities of s."

"Bob Larson is a fucking carny. He's a showman, like myself. He does what he does for ratings and to sell his fucking cult-shit videotapes and his cassettes to you, the weak-minded fuck. Okay? [...] Bob Larson has actually admitted this shit it to me. Bob Larson and me are actually kind of friends [...] Bob Larson does what he does to make fucking money to support his prostitute habits."

"We were just wanting to make something new, and fresh, and exciting, and healing that was going to be able to, you know, help heal our fans and help heal us because we were both going through situations that were mentally challenging. This was our place where we can let our superhero versions of ourselves shine and create the things we express and share with the world, which was our music."

"What begins as effort eventually becomes identity."

"Care and concern for youth is more so an investment rather than a direct expense."

"Cancer is not an invader. It is a mirror."

"Disparities in health outcomes underscore the need for equitable public health interventions that account for sociocultural dynamics and structural inequities."

"The burden of disease stands squarely at the intersection of prevailing community behaviors and public health readiness."

"Addiction does not always kill in dramatic fashion. Sometimes, it kills slowly and invisibly."

"The social environment has a major influence on health behaviors that in turn are associated with risk for cancer."

"What we crave, and how often we give in to those cravings, leaves a trace. A molecular record."

"The uneven affordability of essential cancer medications across regions illustrates the persistent challenge of ensuring equitable global health access."

"Understanding life’s inherent propensity to preserve itself is quintessential to our understanding of even the most modern aspects of healthcare."

"The terrain in which cancer grows is shaped by everyday behavior."

"Growing evidence indicates that once diseases like cancer or cardiovascular disease are diagnosed, these same exposures may be associated with improved survival outcomes."

"Even before the close of the 1940s, a reaction against the bop ethos could be heard on both the East Coast and West Coast. In time, this movement got a name -- "cool jazz.""

"Many jazz fans simply refer to [hard bop] as the Blue Note sound in deference to the recprd label most closely associated with the glory days of hard bop in the 1950s and 1960s."

"As your mayor, I will never stop working for you, I will continue working with you to make sure our agenda and our administration truly reflects the full diversity and will of the people of Los Angeles."

"I don’t believe the way to show my strength is by fighting. I believe the way to show my strength is by winning."

"Making history with each of you today is a monumental moment in my life and in Los Angeles."

"If we are going to bring Angelenos inside and move our city in a new direction, we must have a single strategy to unite our city and county and engage the state, the federal government, the private sector and every other stakeholder."

"I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?"

"But legends are common enough. Turn up any rock on the beach and you’ll find one. I for one prefer to look for real answers to our shortcomings, not blame them on ancient superstitions."

"No disrespect to you, Tully. But don’t try to teach an old thief to steal. I know your order chops logic with the best of them, and that half your brother clerics fall into laughing fits when they hear those deadly serious young acolytes debate theological issues set aside a century ago."

"Well, knowing your own part in this is a good sign that you’re becoming a man. Most boys would have tried to justify their actions by shifting blame or by claiming some moral imperative to fight."

"“I don’t know what to say.” “Then say nothing, Pug. It makes you seem wise when everyone is babbling.”"

"“I’m not one to advise you in such matters, I fear, as I’ve had scant experience with women, of any age, let alone such young and headstrong ones.” Looking Pug in the eyes, he said, “But this much I do know, it is almost impossible in the heat of the moment to understand long-term consequences.”"

"“Our host is the sort who sees which way the wind blows before making up his mind; he waits word from the merchant before deciding if we’re prisoners or guests.” The magician chuckled. “You’ll find as you grow older that minor functionaries are the same the world over.”"

"There may be a more superstitious breed on Midkemia than sailors, but who they are I could not tell you."

"Pug questioned him with a look. “I don’t understand.” The traveler shook his head. “I don’t expect you to, Pug. Let us say that things are occurring that can be understood only by examination after the fact, with a distance of time separating the participants from the participating.”"

"When the boy had finished, the King said, “That is a wonderful tale. It is better than the versions that have reached our court, for while it is not half so heroic, it is twice as impressive for being true.”"

"One time is much like another to death. She comes when she will. So why give over your mind to worry?"

"Among man’s strange undertakings, war stood clearly forth as the strangest."

"But when you’ve seen as many different lands as I have, you learn that the more things look different, the more they are the same."

"“We have an old saying: ‘In the High Council, there is no brother.’”"

"There is only one thing I know of that a woman hates more than a man she doesn’t like paying her too much attention—and that’s lack of attention from a man she does like."

"“There are many ways to love someone. Sometimes we want to love so much, we’re not too choosy about who we love. Other times we make love such a pure and noble thing, no poor human can ever meet our vision. But for the most part, love is a recognition, an opportunity to say, ‘There is something about you I cherish.’ It doesn’t entail marriage, or even physical love. There’s love of parents, love of city or nation, love of life, and love of people. All different, all love.”"

"Love is like a lot of things, it is always best done with the head. Save mindless efforts for mindless things."

"Aye, and it’s a brave dwarf who loots a dragon’s lair."

"All creatures fear change, even the gods."

"What they teach you is useful, but never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution."

"I am!—he cries, and a million philosophies cry out in wonder."

"We of the Assembly support the Empire because on this world it is the single most powerful force for order—not because it is noble, or fair, or beautiful, or just. But because of it the majority of humanity can live and work without war in their homelands, can live without famine, plagues, and the other disasters of older times. And with this order around us, we of the Assembly can work unhindered."

"The path of power is a path of turns within turns."

"As I thought. That man’s got the heart of a shark, which is to say none, and the courage of a jellyfish, which is also to say none."

"“There is no place like the sea, gentlemen. Those who live on land all their lives can never truly understand. The sea is basic, sometimes cruel, sometimes gentle, and never predictable. But it is nights like this that make me thankful the gods allowed me to be a sailor.” Arutha said, “And something of a philosopher as well.” Amos chuckled. “Take any deep-water sailor who’s faced death at sea as many times as I have, and scratch him lightly. Underneath you’ll find a philosopher, Highness. No fancy words, I’ll warrant you, but a deep abiding sense of his place in the world.”"

"The war goes on. Good for the merchants, bad for the rest."

"“It would be a proper occasion for you to make some sort of entrance into court society.” “I’m sorry, Hocho,” Milamber said, “I have little desire to attend any festivals. I have been to one earlier this month, in Ontoset, as part of my studies. The dances are boring, the food tends toward the awful, and the wine is as flat as the speeches. The games are of less interest still. If this is the court society you speak of, then I’ll be fine without it.”"

"“It seems to me there are several major problems here, problems I can only guess at in terms of impact upon the Empire. “First”—he held up his index finger—“those in power are more concerned with their own grandeur than with the well-being of the Empire. And as they are those who appear to the casual eye to be the Empire, it is an easy thing not to notice.”"

"“Second, there must never be a time when the need for stability overrules the need for growth.” “But we have always grown!” objected Hochopepa. “Not true,” countered Milamber. “You have always expanded, and that seems like growth if you don’t investigate closely. But while your armies have been bringing new lands into your borders, what has happened to your art, your music, your literature, your research? Even the vaunted Assembly does little more than refine that which is already known.”"

"That you have lived as you have lived for centuries is no license for this cruelty. All here are now judged, and all are found wanting."

"The Empire must change its course, or it is doomed to fall. The rotten, weak heart of this culture cannot support its own weight much longer, and like a ngaggi tree with a rotten core, it will collapse under its own weight."

"I see myself as a servant of the gods, though that may be only my vanity speaking."

"He was always complaining of there being so much to learn and so little time to learn it. And that from a man who had lived years beyond numbering."

"“You don’t want to be King,” he said, his tone accusatory. Lyam laughed bitterly. “No sane man would.”"

"Many men do things they regret later. Only a few are granted the opportunity to make amends."

"I think I know what power can do, and what sort of men seek it."

"African American children are only 19 percent of the preschool population, but comprise nearly half of all suspensions,"

"Children who are suspended are ten times more likely to enter the juvenile justice system,They’re more likely to drop out of school, have low achievement, and be suspended again."

"Now these are all childlike behaviors, albeit from a very curious child, but childlike nonetheless,"

"When we’re aware of ourselves, then we come to know what our hot buttons are, what our behavior is, and how we respond to the behavior of others"

"Imagine a world where we intentionally taught children pro-social skills, gave them many opportunities to practice, and positively reinforced them every time they used those skills"

"School resource officers have become more involved in the basic discipline of children, stepping in where teachers previously would have handled low-level misbehavior"

"Emmy Noether proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between and s. Because these theorems are not in the mainstream of her scholarly work, which was the development of modern abstract algebra, it is of some historical interest to examine how she came to make these discoveries. The present paper is an historical account of the circumstances in which she discovered and proved these theorems which physicists refer to collectively as . The work was done soon after . The failure of local energy conservation in the general theory was a problem that concerned people at that time, among them David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Albert Einstein. Noether's theorems solved this problem. With her characteristically deep insight and thorough analysis, in solving that problem she discovered very general theorems that have profoundly influenced modern physics."

"In 1943 fear that the German war machine might use s was abating and among s another fear was taking its place - that of a postwar nuclear arms race with worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons. Manhattan Project scientists and engineers began to discuss uses of in the postwar world. Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, James A. Franck and others launched a concerted effort to lay groundwork for international control of the technology. Realizing the devastation nuclear weapons could cause and that they could be made and delivered much more cheaply than conventional weapons of the same power, they tried to persuade policy makers to take into account long range consequences of using atomic bombs and not base their decisions on short range military expediency alone. They met with little success. The scientists' main message, unheeded then and very relevant now, is that worldwide international agreements are needed to provide for inspection and control of nuclear weapons technology. Their memoranda and reports remain as historic documents eloquently testifying to their concern."

"Enrico Fermi lived from 1901 to 1954, a period of great progress in physics and a period in which opportunities for women to study and work in institutions of higher learning increased significantly in Europe and North America. Though there are a few examples of women who made important contributions to physics in the 18th century such as and , it was only in Fermi's time that the number began to increase significantly. It is remarkable that almost immediately after they gained entrance to laboratories and universities, among them appeared women of great creative ability who made lasting contributions to physics. This talk is mainly about some of these whose scientific lives are not as well known as their contributions deserve — Emmy Noether, , , . Additionally, some outstanding women whose work played a role in Enrico Fermi's life in physics are noted - , , , and ."

"Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard worked together at in 1939-40, just after was discovered, to ascertain the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction, and then on the construction of the first nuclear reactor. Szilard believed a nuclear bomb could be built, and that the Germans may be doing so, but Fermi was sceptical. The Anglo-American project to build a bomb began late in 1941 after brought the to the attention of U. S. physicists. Szilard recalled "On matters scientific or technical there was rarely any disagreement [but] Fermi and I disagreed from the very start of our collaboration about every issue that involved not science but principles of action in the face of the approaching war. If the nation owes us gratitude — and it may not — it does so for having stuck it out together as long as was necessary." As the war with Germany was drawing to a close and the successful construction of the atomic bombs was well underway, these two men took opposing positions regarding use of the bombs."

"Although she was primarily a particle theorist, her most important work may well be her contribution to our understanding of superconductivity. She was a trailblazer for and, in her retirement, led the effort to chronicle the contributions of women to physics in the 20th century."