Episode Thirteen Quotes

Not all ghosts haunt houses. Some try to live in your head.

The Buddhists are right: Life is illusion. Quantum mechanics is also right: Reality is a construct of human observation. Even time itself isn’t real.

As the Buddhists say, everything is illusion. Everything is energy, and as it is above, so it is below,

If your delusion is actually true, are you still insane?

Proust is famous for his rhapsodies on hawthorns but his book has only three of these, whereas there are thirteen scenes in brothels, one especially detailed episode running to more than forty pages. Few critics mention the brothels but they are more fun than the hawthorns.

Damn. You missed the last season of Game of Thrones.” “Was it any good?” “It was real good. Extending it to thirteen episodes so they could properly develop the climax was a smart move, after how much they’d been rushing things.” “Last I heard, they were cutting it down to six episodes.

I remember our lives together, all our hopes and joy and sadness and dreams, and it all seems so meaningless and also piercingly beautiful, a single act in an endlessly repeating play in which the actors constantly change. A play in which the story doesn’t matter but whose continuation is essential.

And he finally achieved another desire, which is to learn what comes after death. He learned that everyone lives forever in one form or another. Everyone receives immortality.

It’s a love for truth, coupled with a belief that anything is possible

That’s the thing about extroverts and introverts. The extrovert usually sets the agenda.

Anomalies don’t mean ghosts. They’re simply things I can’t explain.

Not all ghosts haunt houses. Some try to live in your head

For science, the problem is simple. If a ghost is made of energy, it will constantly bleed its own essence as heat in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. A sustained haunting would require a constant power flux.

After you shoot the pilot of a TV show, the network executives watch all the pilots and pick about a third of them to actually get made into a series. We were part of the lucky third, and, even cooler than that, we got the highest episode order of all the picked-up shows. Most of them got ten- or thirteen-episode pickups. We got twenty. Mom says this is probably because of my outstanding performance as Sam Puckett, a zinger-slinging, rough-around-the-edges tomboy with a heart of gold who, ironically compared to my experience with it, loves food.

You’ve been away for a year and a half, yeah?” “Yep. No TV, no movies, no internet. Not even a radio.” “Damn. You missed the last season of Game of Thrones.” “Was it any good?” “It was real good. Extending it to thirteen episodes so they could properly develop the climax was a smart move, after how much they’d been rushing things.” “Last I heard, they were cutting it down to six episodes.” “Someone leaked the scripts and the internet went crazy. Something about everyone turning dumb, evil or both. They rewrote the whole thing and everyone really liked how it turned out.” “Nice.

Roebuck and Chapman stand behind a seated woman wearing a hospital gown and the bulky steel apparatus on her head. She is pale and crying. The front of her gown is dark with a brownish vomit stain. The skin around her eyes is similarly dark as well as puffy. The eyes themselves appear haunted. Behind her, the men grin. Roebuck pops a champagne bottle and pours Chapman a splash in a Dixie cup. He leans to pour a little for the woman, which stays untouched on the table in front of her. He takes his own swig directly from the bottle. Gloria Flick walks on-screen holding up a sign on which she scrawled WE DID IT! The seated woman stops crying. Eyes glassy and deranged, she looks directly into the camera lens while the researchers go on celebrating. Her face shines with madness as it stretches into a broad, lunatic grin.

A couple of weeks before, while going over a Variety list of the most popular songs of 1935 and earlier, to use for the picture’s sound track – which was going to consist only of vintage recording played not as score but as source music – my eye stopped on a .933 standard, words by E.Y. (“Yip”) Harburg (with producer Billy Rose), music by Harold Arlen, the team responsible for “Over the Rainbow”, among many notable others, together and separately. Legend had it that the fabulous Ms. Dorothy Parker contributed a couple of lines. There were just two words that popped out at me from the title of the Arlen-Harburg song, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”. Not only did the sentiment of the song encapsulate metaphorically the main relationship in our story – Say, it’s only a paper moon Sailing over a cardboard sea But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me – the last two words of the title also seemed to me a damn good movie title. Alvin and Polly agreed, but when I tried to take it to Frank Yablans, he wasn’t at all impressed and asked me what it meant. I tried to explain. He said that he didn’t “want us to have our first argument,” so why didn’t we table this conversation until the movie was finished? Peter Bart called after a while to remind me that, after all, the title Addie Pray was associated with a bestselling novel. I asked how many copies it had sold in hardcover. Peter said over a hundred thousand. That was a lot of books but not a lot of moviegoers. I made that point a bit sarcastically and Peter laughed dryly. The next day I called Orson Welles in Rome, where he was editing a film. It was a bad connection so we had to speak slowly and yell: “Orson! What do you think of this title?!” I paused a beat or two, then said very clearly, slowly and with no particular emphasis or inflection: “Paper …Moon!” There was a silence for several moments, and then Orson said, loudly, “That title is so good, you don’t even need to make the picture! Just release the title! Armed with that reaction, I called Alvin and said, “You remember those cardboard crescent moons they have at amusement parks – you sit in the moon and have a picture taken?” (Polly had an antique photo of her parents in one of them.) We already had an amusement park sequence in the script so, I continued to Alvin, “Let’s add a scene with one of those moons, then we can call the damn picture Paper Moon!” And this led eventually to a part of the ending, in which we used the photo Addie had taken of herself as a parting gift to Moze – alone in the moon because he was too busy with Trixie to sit with his daughter – that she leaves on the truck seat when he drops her off at her aunt’s house. … After the huge popular success of the picture – four Oscar nominations (for Tatum, Madeline Kahn, the script, the sound) and Tatum won Best Supporting Actress (though she was the lead) – the studio proposed that we do a sequel, using the second half of the novel, keeping Tatum and casting Mae West as the old lady; they suggested we call the new film Harvest Moon. I declined. Later, a television series was proposed, and although I didn’t want to be involved (Alvin Sargent became story editor), I agreed to approve the final casting, which ended up being Jodie Foster and Chris Connolly, both also blondes. When Frank Yablans double-checked about my involvement, I passed again, saying I didn’t think the show would work in color – too cute – and suggested they title the series The Adventures of Addie Pray. But Frank said, “Are you kidding!? We’re calling it Paper Moon - that’s a million-dollar title!” The series ran thirteen episodes.

Already muted, their voices quickly fade to a tinny, incomprehensible echo, as if they have become EVP themselves.

Some types of EMF can produce fear in people. They make you uneasy and feel like you’re being watched. In extreme cases, you wind up paranoid, crying your eyes out, and absolutely terrified. EMF can even make you hallucinate ghosts.

The Alamo is a story we've learned to tell ourselves to justify violence, both real and imagined, first against Mexicans, then Tejanos, then Mexican-Americans, and eventually the Vietcong and al-Qaeda. "Remember the Alamo" was the battle cry that we recycle long past the fight's utility. How Mexican-Americans were shamed in Texas History classes, how politicians and bureaucrats have changed that history over the years, and any number of other episodes that make up the back half of this book tell us more about who we are now than what we thought we knew about what happened over thirteen days in 1836. That is the history that we need to learn, because we are repeating it ceaselessly. Maybe it's time to forget the Alamo, or at least the whitewashed story, and start telling the history that includes everyone. Problems arise when there's an official version of events. Texas is big enough to tell an expansive, inclusive story about the Alamo, what really happened before, how it really went down, how we wrestled over who had the right to tell the story, and why we're still fighting about it today. We do not and will not agree completely on the events. It'd be a strange place if we did and one we're sure we wouldn't like. From a practical perspective, we must do something with Alamo Plaza. It desperately needs a refresh. But spending $450 million to build a monument to white supremacy as personified by Bowie, Travis, and Crockett would be a grave injustice to a city that desperately needs better schools, jobs, and services. If Phil Collins wants to "Remember the Alamo," he is welcom to do so in the privacy of this own home. The rest of us need to forget what we learned about the Alamo, embrace the truth, and celebrate all Texans.

In our dimension, we have gravity and light. In higher dimensions, you might have gravity but no light. The Standard Model gets real strange when it comes to good old gravity in our realm: Why is it so weak compared to the other three forces of nature? Why can a kitchen magnet pick up a paper clip that takes an entire planet to hold down with gravity? It makes no sense.

The worst was these feelings that came out of nowhere. I was scared shitless, yeah, but it was more than that, I don’t even know what to call it. Dread, maybe. Animal terror. A feeling I was not only being stared at, but that something stood right behind me drilling holes into the back of my head. Jessica: Okay— Sparling: Underneath it was this emptiness, a sense I didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Like I was a lab rat about to get injected with cancer, which is scary enough for the rat, but suddenly it realizes, oh, I’m just a rat, all along I thought I was important, but there are giants who don’t regard me as important at all.

I believe that if we are to make any real progress in the psychic investigation, we must do it with scientific apparatus and in a scientific manner, just as we do in medicine, electricity, chemistry, and other fields. —Thomas Alva Edison, interview with Scientific American, 1920

Much changes in eighteen months on earth, in the age of acceleration that began around the turn of the millennium and still continues to this day. All our stories are told more quickly now, we are addicted to the acceleration, we have forgotten the pleasures of the old slownesses, of the dawdles, the browses, the three-volume novels, the four-hour motion pictures, the thirteen-episode drama series, the pleasures of duration, of lingering. Do what you have to do, tell your story, live your life, get out quickly, spit spot.

I have an idea, I'll buy that book, and you buy mine, and we'll talk about them over dinner.

In Greek mythology, the titan Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humans, creating civilization. As punishment, Zeus bound him to a rock and each day sent an eagle to eat his liver, the organ where the Greeks thought human emotions resided. The moral of the story is knowledge brings eternal emotional torment. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempts Eve and Adam to eat forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God punishes them by banishing them. The moral of the story is knowledge destroys innocence and produces suffering.

In Greek mythology, the titan Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humans, creating civilization. As punishment, Zeus bound him to a rock and each day sent an eagle to eat his liver, the organ where the Greeks thought human emotions resided. The moral of the story is knowledge brings eternal emotional torment. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempts Eve and Adam to eat forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God punishes them by banishing them. The moral of the story is knowledge destroys innocence and produces suffering. The list goes on and on. It’s an archetypal idea. Every overreaching mad scientist in every sci-fi movie is another retelling of this ancient story. Me, I say grab the fire. I say eat the fruit. I say bring on the suffering. The history of science is one of pain, broken dreams, and occasional triumph. This is the march of progress. This is the wheel of civilization.

You know how they tell you on the plane to put the oxygen mask on yourself before your kid? The same goes with life.

The trick is, ghosts aren’t easy to talk to. If it was easy, they’d tap you on the shoulder while you’re making supper and ask you if you’d be willing to discuss their feelings about your house being built on their burial ground.

Greg’s deal meant that the new show had been ordered straight to series with a thirteen-episode guarantee. Most shows start by making a pilot episode. When the pilot is done, a group of mysterious people gather in a room and weigh its merits, consult various oracles, and then send white papal smoke out of the holy chimney when it is decided it will become a series. Being ordered straight to series was great news because it meant we were able to skip that mysterious and painful pilot process, but on top of that, the first episode was slated to air after the Super Bowl, TV’s most coveted slot. It was a remarkable and rare opportunity, a home-run decision for any actor.

Somehow, Midsomer Murders is our best-rated TV import,’ admits Adrian, reluctantly. ‘It’s been getting a 30–40 per cent audience share for the past thirteen years – as long as it’s been around.’ The show is so popular in Denmark that to celebrate the anniversary of the ITV crime drama, bosses teamed up with Danish producers and stars from The Killing and Borgen for a special episode. ‘I think it’s because people find it soothing or something,’ says Adrian. I tell him that The Viking compared the experience of watching Midsomer Murders with eating soup: ‘It’s not the most exciting thing out there but it does make you feel all warm and hygge.

inside, but my fears proved unfounded. The inside is as amazing as the outside. The first impression is actually a bit of a shock. You know you’re instantly being transported back in time; you’re just not sure to which decade. The architecture is grand, with classical elements,

Intent—the core you, the real you, defined as your single driving desire—attracts result.

There are four known categories of hauntings. One is where an event imprints energy onto the environment. At some trigger, the event replays itself like a tape. Another is inhuman, which might be demonic or elemental. A third is poltergeist, where a spirit uses a human as an agent for telekinetic activity. And the last is typically what we investigate, which is an intelligent haunting. That’s where the spirit is conscious, intelligent, and may be willing to communicate.

It was the most soul-crushing thing I’d ever seen. The universe rendered as an endless, meaningless chaos that we shape into reality and onto which we project our hopes, instincts, and desires as narratives and meaning. A giant, seething junkyard flowing with algorithms that we imagine as a purposeful machine.

this is the kind of place that wants you to sleep but makes you wonder if you’ll wake up.

So much of what made me Claire was a projection of genetics, chemicals, and environment. Take them all away, and what are you? Just a ghost.

The camera looks down at a man strapped onto a centrifuge, which spins rapidly. The man wears a strange noduled steel helmet and sensory deprivation goggles. The man silently screams.

You can’t show up and expect them to perform for you because finally they have an appreciative audience for their wall banging or floating down the stairs.

he still won. Still sucker punched me anytime I wanted to take a chance on having more. It’s my own damn fault. I let him beat me even after I left him in the dust,

i’m sitting here in the bathroom practicing my special empathy tone

Female singers: THE GROOVY PEOPLE ARE HERE

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” —Eden Phillpotts

watch out then—being black in a horror movie is like wearing a red shirt on star trek

Kevin: Fine. You can come. Just remember what I’m trained to do. Jake: They teach you how to plant evidence at police academy?

Claire looks like she ate a dead rat but the rat had a drug inside it that gave her superpowers.

Ed’s reason for breaking up with Debbie Lynn (played by Gloria McMillan) is that she got married. Actually, Gloria was busy doing episodes of Our Miss Brooks for television and radio as was Gale Gordon which is why Gordon appears in only thirteen Fibber McGee and Molly episodes during the 1952-1953 season and three of those are repeats of shows from previous years.

Most of my life, I’ve been a dead man trapped in a live body. Cursed.

The moral of the story is knowledge destroys innocence and produces suffering.

When I was about thirteen, Tata went on his eight-week trip to Europe by steamship. One night, when Tata was away, Amma woke me up suddenly in the middle of the night and said, ‘I am being possessed by a Devi (goddess) and you should touch my feet!’ This was her second episode of that manic mood I witnessed. I was very afraid again.

I’m a single mom, and I work a lot of hours. It doesn’t make me a bad parent. It makes me an adult living in the United States of America.

I’ll tell you what does scare me, though. People. If you think about all the terrible things a single human being is capable of rationalizing and doing, it’s amazing we have enough trust to function as a society.

We spend so much time every day without really being aware we’re alive. It’s the greatest thing when someone reminds us we exist and that we matter.

I fully understand every time an African American appears on TV, the whole race is being judged.

but when I asked if there was a Santa Claus, the folks said, “Some people believe there’s a Santa, some people don’t. What do you believe?” The same went with the Easter bunny, tooth fairy, and God. They exposed me to spirituality and various religions but didn’t raise me in one, trusting I’d choose for myself when I was old enough to be able to choose. Anything else, they saw as brainwashing.

Maybe it’s also because even though I don’t believe, I sometimes wish there was real evidence so I could. Sometimes, I want to believe I can believe.

On the left wall, someone spray-painted the slogan: YOU’RE EITHER ON THE BUS OR OFF THE BUS! And on the right, like a magic incantation: !SUB EHT FFO RO SUB EHT NO REHTIE ER’UOY The quote is by Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and a major counterculture figure in the sixties. On the cross-country Great Bus Trip of 1964, he and his Merry Pranksters took their Acid Tests on the road. Whenever the bus stopped, a Prankster would wander off and could not be found, leading Kesey to declare, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” Either part of the group’s trip or left behind to do your own thing.