Koch Quotes

Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?" Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.

She must feel like Lucifer’s frigid breath is running down the back of her delicate neck.

You sound like you’re enjoying my suffering.

Her growing possessiveness felt both good and bad.

The verdict got both the fish and me off the hook.

I watched her undress with moonlight shivering across the room from behind sheer curtains that moved with the currents from the hearth fire.

I knew I rode a rugged crest of turmoil that might crash on the rocky shore of irrational behavior.

What the hell, if you are going to roll the dice with Lucifer, I say go the distance.

Death rides on all of our shoulders from the day we are born.

I swallowed a sigh since, truthfully, I was glad she found the cabin.

The final sound of the rifle shot bounced around the lake.

It was as if we played chess after denying me both bishops and knights.

The steps leading to the porch looked worn, cracked, and unpainted, ready for a nice hot fire.

Death is the ultimate test of faith.

A look of absolute terror locked onto her features.

We'll always have Paris.

Sometimes things come out of your mouth that you regret later on. Or no, not regret. You say something so razor-sharp that the person you say it to carries it around with them for the rest of their life.

My crazy's working a lot better than your sanity.

Kenneth Koch once said, “You aren’t just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

If I had to give a definition of happiness, it would be this: happiness needs nothing but itself; it doesn’t have to be validated.

The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then Sonja's father nodded. And Ove nodded curtly back. And then they rose to their feet, objective and determined, in the way two men might behave if they had just agreed to go and kill a third man.

It's a snake, then.' 'Rattler?' 'Most likely.' I was taking this extremely well. 'We have to kill it. By we, of course, I mean you. I'll stand here and scream.

We think a person should do right because it's right, not because their soul will be in eternal jeopardy if they don't toe the line.

Happiness needs nothing but itself; it doesn't have to be validated. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Plans make dreams reality.

You come from Planet Hunk, sent to Earth to protect and serve. And make the ladies happy.

Those who seize the day become seriously rich.

That was how I looked at life sometimes, as a warm meal that was growing cold. I knew I had to eat, or else I would die, but I had lost my appetite.

Paper balls? You were throwing balled up paper at an alligator?

Unhappiness loves company. Unhappiness can’t stand silence—especially not the uneasy silence that settles in when it is all alone.

The way to create something great is to create something simple.

You have enchanted me with a single kiss Which can never be undone Until the destruction of language

Do days exist without calendars? Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks?

I was moving from worried to scared, and I could see terrified waving at me from just around the next bend in the road.

Do I really run like that?" (Kitty) "Yup," Martini confirmed. "Don't worry, I think it's sexy." "Thank God. I think I look like a cheetah on drugs.

Can either one of you actually fly?" "Ummm...define fly." I heard cursing over the radios.

I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you.

I'll marry you before any tree on Earth.

So I want to share a little news." "You getting married?" Butch tossed back half the new Lag. "Where you registered? Crate and Bury 'Em?" "Try Heckler and Koch." The Reverend opened his jacket and flashed the butt of a forty. "Nice little poodle shooter you got there, vampire." "Put a hell of a-" V cut in. "You two are like playing tennis, and racquet sports bore me. What's the news?" Revh looked at Butch. "He has such phenomenal people skills, doesn't he." "Try living with him.

... technically, just like with the rings of a tree or Carbon-14, it had to be possible to measure the passage of time by the melting of vanilla ice cream.

What song would lull a snake into submission? "John Mayer?" "Over my dead body." "Could be, Tim, could be.

You cook?” Alfred asked Martini, clearly shocked. “I can dress myself, too. And sometimes I can handle all Field Operations for the entire Centaurion Division. Amazing, isn’t it?

There are times when you run back through your life, to see whether you can locate the point at which it could still have taken a different turn.

Once you go alien, you really do never go back.

Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.

I dug through my purse for the Glock. There is was, and I realized I'd never set the safety. I decided to consider this a great example of forethought rather than my being the stupidest gun handler on the planet.

All these heads, I thought. All these heads into which everything disappears.

I hope that's working like we wanted it to." "It's a plan of yours, Kitty. I'm sure it's going to go haywire somewhere.

Psychos and megalomaniacs are my forte, remember? They all wanna hang with me

When people get a chance to come close to death without having it touch them personally, they never miss the opportunity.

The U.S. was the immigration country of choice even for alien jellyfish things that turned humans into scary monsters. It made you proud, really.

I think you're cute when the power goes to your head.

Ha tizenkettőből kilenc kérdésben egyetért velem, szavazzon rám! Ha tizenkettőből mind a tizenkét kérdésben egyetért velem, forduljon pszichiáterhez! (Edward I. Koch a New York-i polgármesteri választásokon, 1989-ben)

Boys, the longer you wait to get my requested prehistoric attack dogs, the more chance we have of people we care about getting hurt, more hurt, or killed. Oh, and don't hurt the alligators--they're a protected species.

wait for me where the skies meet the sea the otherworld where our old souls will meet again for the very first time where our imagination takes flight and magic isn't a fairytale

Wow, bossy and nasty. What a fun combo.

I wasn’t ready For you. I understood nothing Seemingly except my feelings You were whirling In your life I was keeping Everything in my head "To Marina

Kitty, do you have the bottle?" "In my purse. Which is in my room. Not that I think I can find my room from here." "I'll get it," Martini said. He stood up and disappeared. Ten seconds later he was back, bottle in hand. "What kept you?" "That purse gets worse every time I look inside.

Welcome to My Super Secret Life, where people try to kill us on a regular basis, and we thwart bad-guy schemes for breakfast. We’re almost like a reality show, only without the alcohol and hot tubs.

All is clouded by desire: as fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust ...Through these it blinds the soul.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

His eyes had something dull about them, expressionless, the bored look of a mediocre intelligence that wrongly supposes it has “seen it all before.

You ever flown something before?" (Christopher) "I hold the highest score at A.S.U. for Star Wars: Starfighter." (Kitty) "I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I'm going to regret this." (Christopher)

I hated having to be someplace on time, it took away so many potential orgasms.

We lifted up and then bobbed. "Back! Pull it back!" (Christopher) "It's hard." (Kitty) "The ground is harder!" (Christopher)

There are people who want to achieve--and then there are sane people.

They didn't answer. But I was thinking. I'd had to do a lot of thinking like this over the past year, and it was starting to come naturally.

Yeah, I know. It's one of my plans. It'll go all Dog Day Afternoon somewhere along the line. But a girl can dream, can't she?

The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The city is the size of a country, but has been operated like a candy store.

Things that matter most Must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

I had no issues with lesbians, but I didn't swing the bat that way, and I kind of resented getting molested.

Great. I was housing with the Extreme Morning Militants. What a joy.

A fixed appointment for the immediate future is the gates of hell;

It may be that you will be happiest in the rat race; perhaps, like me, you are basically a rat.

Even when you act like nothing is happening, something happens—I don’t know how to put it any more clearly. It’s

The stupid woman is the one who thinks she doesn’t need any help.

Historically, philosophy does not have an impressive track record of answering questions about natural world in a decisive manner.

I was on the floor. "Um, a little help?" Christopher put his hand down. Martini cleared his throat and Christopher's hand retracted. "I can handle it, thanks." "There's nothing amorous about pulling someone off the floor," Christopher muttered. "There is when I do it.

Do not be defeated by the Feeling that there is too much for you to know. That is a myth of the oppressor. You are Capable of understanding life. And it is yours alone. And only this time.

Oh, sure, they’d insisted I take Washington Wife class after I’d inadvertently insulted the Prime Minster of England, but how could I have known he wasn’t willing to admit that the Rolling Stones weren’t half the band Aerosmith was and never would be?

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

Free-ranging single men are like a house that has been empty too long. There must be something fishy about the house, the woman thinks. Up for sale for six months and it's still vacant.

By this point in history—after the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and in the midst of layers of ecological crises—free market fundamentalists should, by all rights, be exiled to a similarly irrelevant status, left to fondle their copies of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in obscurity. They are saved from this ignominious fate only because their ideas about corporate liberation, no matter how demonstrably at war with reality, remain so profitable to the world’s billionaires that they are kept fed and clothed in think tanks by the likes of Charles and David Koch, owners of the diversified dirty energy giant Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil.

But before I ran out and got shot by someone I merely hadn't seen, I examined the remote. There were a lot of buttons on it. None of them were marked. Naturally, I considered hitting some at random but decided I was thrilled to still be alive and unscathed.

Those who favor a “grand plan” over experimentation fail to understand the role that failed experiments play in creating progress in society. Failures quickly and efficiently signal what doesn’t work, minimizing waste and redirecting scarce resources to what does work. A market economy is an experimental discovery process, in which business failures are inevitable and any attempt to eliminate them only ensures even greater failures.

My lessons weren’t specific to business, but they were fundamental values—integrity, humility, responsibility, work ethic, entrepreneurship, a thirst for knowledge, the desire to make a contribution, and concern for others—that profoundly influenced the way I do business and live my life to this day.

You sometimes hear about people who have lost their sense of smell and taste: for those people, a plate of the most delicious food means nothing at all. That was how I looked at life sometimes, as a warm meal that was growing cold. I knew I had to eat, otherwise I would die, but I had lost my appetite.

A reader reads a book. If it’s a good book, he forgets himself. That’s all a book has to do. When the reader can’t forget himself and keeps having to think about the writer the whole time, the book is a failure. That has nothing to do with fun. If it’s fun you’re after, buy a ticket for a roller coaster.

The first thing that struck you about Claire’s plate was its vast emptiness. Of course I’m well aware that, in the better restaurants, quality takes precedence over quantity, but there are voids and then there are voids. The void here, that part of the plate on which no food at all was present, had clearly been raised to a matter of principle. It was as though the empty plate was challenging you to say something about it, to go to the open kitchen and demand an explanation. ‘You wouldn’t even dare!’ the plate said, and laughed in your face.

golden rules for career success 1 Specialize in a very small niche; develop a core skill 2 Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader 3 Realize that knowledge is power 4 Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best 5 Identify where 20 percent of effort gives 80 percent of returns 6 Learn from the best 7 Become self-employed early in your career 8 Employ as many net value creators as possible 9 Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill 10 Exploit capital leverage

And please don't sink into this woeful nonsense about not having time to read...The real culprit here is almost never your schedule. It is your boredom--your boredom with the books you think you are supposed to read. Find a book you want, a book that gives you real trembling excitement, a book that is hot in your hands, and you'll have time galore.

If my efforts have led to greater success than usual, this is due, I believe, to the fact that during my wanderings in the field of medicine, I have strayed onto paths where the gold was still lying by the wayside. It takes a little luck to be able to distinguish gold from dross, but that is all.

You know, things you did and do to make sure you and Mom have such a great marriage?” “Oh! I gave that advice to Jeff already. Applies to him more than you.” “Share with my anyway.” Dad shrugged. “I told him that he just needed to remember three things. First, he doesn’t run your life, and after today, he won’t run his life, either. Second, in any argument, there is your wife’s side and then there is enemy camp; never choose enemy camp in an attempt to be reasonable, because it never works. And, third, to remember that a happy wife is a happy life.

The dilemma I was faced with was one every parent faces sooner or later: you want to defend your child, of course; you stand up for your child, but you mustn't do it all too vehemently, and above all not too eloquently - you mustn't drive anyone into a corner. The educators, the teachers, will let you have your say, but afterwards they'll take revenge on your child. You may come up with better arguments - it's not too hard to come up with better arguments than the educators, the teachers - but in the end, your child to going to pay for it. Their frustration at being shown up is something they'll take out on the student.

We shouldn’t want to force anyone to read, just as little as we should want to force people to go to the movies, listen to music, have sex, or consume alcoholic beverages. Literature doesn’t belong in a secondary school. No, it belongs more on the list of things I just mentioned. The list that includes sex and drugs, all the things that give us pleasure without any external coercion. A required reading list? How dare we!

This particular restaurant is one where you have to call three months in advance—or six, or eight, don’t ask me. Personally, I’d never want to know three months in advance where I’m going to eat on any given evening, but apparently some people don’t mind. A few centuries from now, when historians want to know what kind of crazies people were at the start of the twenty-first century, all they’ll have to do is look at the computer files of the so-called “top” restaurants.

When the conversation turns too quickly to films, I see it as a sign of weakness. I mean: films are more something for the end of the evening, when you really don’t have much else to talk about. I don’t know why, but when people start talking about films, I always get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, like when you wake up in the morning and find that it’s already getting dark outside.

Claire is smarter than I am. I’m not saying that out of some half-baked feminist sentiment or in order to endear women to me. You’ll never hear me claim that ‘women in general’ are smarter than men. Or more sensitive, more intuitive, or that they are more ‘in touch with life’, or any of the other horseshit that, when all is said and done, so-called ‘sensitive’ men try to peddle more often than women themselves.

I let them do some simple arithmetic. In a group of one hundred people, how many assholes are there? How many fathers who humiliate their children? How many morons whose breath stinks like rotten meat but who refuse to do anything about it? How many hopeless cases who go on complaining all their lives about the non-existent injustices they’ve had to suffer? Look around you, I said. How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one family member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be - and not only you, but virtually the entire family - if that uncle or cousin would step on a landmine or be hit by a five-hundred-pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past - I never specifically mentioned the Second World War, I used it as an example because it’s the one that most appeals to their imaginations - and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be. The injustice is found more in the fact that the assholes are also put on the list of innocent victims. That their names are also chiselled into the war memorials.