“It would make things easier for both of us, especially for you, if we could forgo the part of this conversation where you take me for a complete idiot...”
“Family has a way of bringing out the worst in people. Every people.”
“If you fall in love with someone, there’s a good chance the person won’t love you back. Hatred, though, is usually mutual. If you despise someone, it’s pretty much a given they’re also not your biggest fan.”
“I never understood why people use words they do not understand.”
“People often confuse leadership with managerial skills.”
“Stories are there to entertain, preserve history, or serve a societal purpose of some kind.”
“Generally speaking, people tend not to question what they’ve been told was true. Scientists are no different; they’ve just been told a lot more things.”
“I was smart enough to know it was wrong, but not brave enough to stop them.”
“Perhaps, deep down inside that rugged shell of yours, there is a little girl desperately waiting for her Prince Charming to propose."
"Of course there is. Only until now, I'd been pretty successful at keeping that little brat's mouth shut.”
“North Korean troops gathering… inside North Korea.
That is unheard of."
"They were massing very close to the border."
"North Korea is the size of Ohio. It would be geographically challenging for them to gather very far from the border.”
“She has more issues than the New York Times.”
“Perhaps, deep down inside that rugged shell of yours, there is a little girl desperately waiting for her Prince Charming to propose."
"Of course there is. Only until now, I'd been pretty successful at keeping that little brat's mouth shut."
"What will your answer be if he asks?"
"You're funny. He can't ask. I'll find a way to be bitchy enough for the next forty years so that perfect moment never comes."
"You seem to have a good handle on that little girl after all.”
“Yes. This, all that's happening now, this is your bat mitzvah. You can play with atoms, you can sit with the grown-ups."
"What does that mean for us?"
"That means you won't be forgiven for childhood mistakes anymore.”
“I thought something bad might have happened to him. It's nice to know he just doesn't want to talk to me.”
“It does not matter. You train your soldiers to kill using video games. They blow enough people up on their computer and it becomes easier for them to kill with a real weapon. Why do you think your government funds so many war and terrorism movies? Hollywood does your dirty work for you. Had 9/11 happened twenty years earlier, the country would have been in chaos, but people have seen enough bad things on their television screen to prepare them for just about anything. We do not really need to talk about government conspiracies.”
“What I am is very much a function of what I am not. If the "other" is the Muslim world, then I am the Judeo-Christian world. IF the other is from thousands of light-years away, I am simply human. Redefine alterity and you can erase boundaries.”
“I have always been thoroughly bewildered by North Korea. They cannot be threatened, as they feel themselves superior to the one making the threat. They cannot be reasoned with, and most importantly, they are 100 percent convinced of their righteousness, so they cannot be bought. Megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur are notoriously difficult to handle, but how generations of them can follow one another is beyond me.”
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
“I think people are scared, and dumb, and selfish on their own, but put enough of them together and they'll be half-decent”
“It's easier to be just one more soldier in a giant army than being the whole army by yourself.”
“Mr. Couture is not an American citizen. He is from Montreal. It is a large city, about the size of Boston, in that very large country just north of here. You may have heard of it. They play hockey. —”
“Deadwood sure isn’t thriving, but it’s still standing. And the landscape is breathtaking. It’s sitting right on the edge of the Black Hills National Forest, with its eerie rock formations, beautiful pine forests, barren rock, canyons, and creeks. I can’t think of a more beautiful place on Earth. I can understand why someone would want to build something there.”
“We wouldn't really see anything at night, from this altitude, but it still felt good, like a layover in Paris. You never leave the airport, but even so, you're in Paris.”
“People who owe me favors are called friends.”
“If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.”
“—So it is not your fault if people have a problem with you. That is just who you are. —Something like that.”
“You’re right, I don’t trust people easily, but I have faith in numbers. —Interesting. —I do. I think people are scared, and dumb, and selfish on their own, but put enough of them together and they’ll be half-decent.”
“Things that are unsightly: birthmarks, infidelity, strangers in one's kitchen. Too much sunlight. Stitches. Missing teeth. Overlong guests.”
“Fire is like greed, my comrade. It spreads across the world, thinking only of itself, seizing everything it sees, and ruining everyone's fun.”
“Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today. He”
“I do love you. I think you know that, but just in case...I love you. ”
“These men had good cause to pursue nuptials; if there's one pattern that psychological studies have established, it's that the institution of marriage has an overwhelmingly salutary effect on men's mental health. "Being married," the prominent government demographer Paul Glick once estimated, "is about twice as advantageous to men as to women in terms of continued survival.”
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