Movie Cliche #12: The Moral. A character states the obvious and everybody gets the point.
Books are an amazing thing. Anyone who thinks of them as an escape from reality or as something you should get your nose out of and go outside and play, or as merely a distraction or an amusement or a...
Three o’clock’s when every doubt and regret and guilty thought bubbles up out of your subconscious to plague you. ‘The dark night of the soul,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald called it.
Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do, she murmured back. So they've invented a new acronym.
History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats.
History was full of divergence points nobody could get anywhere near—from Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination to the battle of Trafalgar. Events so critical and so volatile that the introduction of a s...
At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians’ and Emily Dickinson’s dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn’t meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neigh...
‘I promise you calm seas,’ Sir Godfrey called, and raised his hands in benediction, ‘auspicious gales, and sail so expeditious that shall catch your royal fleet far off.’
Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying 'See the Siamese twins,' and everybody pays a buck, thinking they're gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it's...
The perfect metaphor, he said, looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even thou...
It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren't guilty at all.
Eureka!s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and fa...
Don’t come all the way across town. There’s a Metro station right outside of Arlington. I’ll meet you there, all right?
Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there? Mel shook his head. By the wolves, he said.
Science fiction is an amazing literature: plot elements that you would think would be completely worn out by now keep changing into surprising new forms.
Of legend. It was impossible to imagine it overrun with the plague, the dead carts full of bodies being pulled through the narrow streets, the colleges boarded up and abandoned, and everywhere the dyi...
You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy? I said. It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the trues...
To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.
There are some things worth giving up anything for, even your freedom, and getting rid of your period is definitely one of them.
TO ALL THEambulance driversfirewatchersair-raid wardensnursescanteen workersairplane spottersrescue workersmathematiciansvicarsvergersshopgirlschorus girlslibrariansdebutantesspinstersfishermenretired...