Minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this!
I studied Hitchcock and Josef von Sternberg under Richard Dillard at Hollins, and that year under his tutelage just completely rewired my brain. Both directors combine moral seriousness with great artistry and, certainly in Hitchcock's case, an enormous respect for plot, for its power to enthrall and delight.
Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
I cannot be a materialist - but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery - such suffering, such dreadful suffering - and shall the short years of Christ's mission atone for it all?
...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws So much, as when we call our old debts in At sixty years, and draw the accounts of evil, And find a deuced balance with the devil.
Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.
At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.
For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
I guess there's just a part of me that's not very enthusiastic about finding myself ten years from now halfway through a story that may or may not be any good.