Every man who is high up likes to think he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It's our only joke. Every woman knows that.
Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.
Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.
I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. . . . Actually Existing Islam. . . which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.
In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.
The time is probably not far distant when music will stand revealed perchance as the mightiest of the arts, and certainly as the one art peculiarly representative of our modern world, with its intense life, complex civilization, and feverish self-consciousness.
You introduced me to Danger and Will Robinson, but you neglected to acquaint me with the other two. ” “Fine,But you can’t make fun of their names. They’re very sensitive. ” “I would never. ” I pointed in the general vicinity of my left ovary, “This is Beam Me Up. ” Then to my right. “And this is Scotty.
Either one fails in one's art or in one's life.