Sight Movie Quotes

There is a LIGHT in this world. A healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometime lose sight of this force when there is suffering, and too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.

Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eternally disappointed ones.

Sweetheart, darling, dearest, it was funny to think that these endearments, which used to sound exceedingly sentimental in movies and books, now held great importance, simple but true verbal affirmations of how they felt for each other. They were words only the heart could hear and understand, words that could impart entire pentameter sonnets in their few, short syllables.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people- and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.

Liz Buxbaum had always been my secret. She was the incredible thing I’d known about but everyone else seemed to miss. The treasure hidden in plain sight, the fortune of a lifetime that was somehow only visible to me.

That’s the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I’m in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can’t enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we’re going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death.

Hadley knows this isn’t some Disney movie. Her parents aren’t ever getting back together

Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience.

I thought that love at first sight was something that was only in cheesy movies and romantic novels until that moment.

Girl, aging girl, is haunted by own nothingness & devours views from windows (stories, movies, overheard talk &sights in the street, pictures in newspapers, etc.) with continuous feeling she is 'just about', miraculously, to come into her own her own life

For onlookers, it must have been an Oscar-worthy sixty-second silent movie. From now on, if anyone asks me if I’ve ever fallen in love at first sight, I shall say yes, for one glorious minute on 21 December 2008.

Understanding knowledge as an essential element of love is vital because we are bombarded daily with messages that tell us love is about mystery, about that which cannot be known. We see movies in which people are represented as being in love who never talk with one another, who fall into bed without ever discussing their bodies, their sexual needs, their likes and dislikes. Indeed, the message is received from the mass media is that knowledge makes love less compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its erotic and transgressive edge. These messages are brought to us by profiteering producers who have no clue about the art of loving, who substitute their mystified visions because they do not really know how to genuinely portray loving interaction.

Eli: I walk by faith, not by sight.

Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude--the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs.

And although cars and motorcycles zipped around, all he saw was the girl coming toward him like a scene in a movie.

He told her: he fell from the sky and lived. She took a deep breath and believed him, because of her father's faith in the myriad and contradictory possibilities of life, and because, too, of what the mountain had taught her. "Okay," she said, exhaling. "I'll buy it. Just don't tell my mother, all right?" The universe was a place of wonders, and only habituation, the anaesthesia of the everyday, dulled our sight. She had read, a couple of days back, that as part of their natural processes of combustion, the stars in the skies crushed carbon into diamonds. The idea of the stars raining diamonds into the void: that sounded like a miracle, too. If that could happen, so could this. Babies fell out of zillionth-floor windows and bounced. There was a scene about that in François Truffaut's movie L'Argent du Poche...She focused her thoughts. "Sometimes," she decided to say, "wonderful things happen to me, too.

Books and movies are like a blueprint…a survival manual disguised as fiction. As folklore. Because the truth hides in plain sight and those that see have to hide and those that can’t see…well, they’re just a part of the plan.' ~ Excerpt from a NYPD Investigation, November, 1951

I remember watching an old Dracula movie once with Alphonse and having him laugh himself sick at the sight of a vamp only a few days out of the grave supposedly raising another one.He'd been impossible for weeks afterwards,mercilessly teasing all the weaker vamps in court about the three-day-old baby that was more powerful than them.

The first six months are what I call the La La Land phase. This is what a lot of romantic novels, songs, and movies are based upon. Enjoy the courtship, nights out, and fun. You will eventually come back to reality.

Above them, one of the blackened television screens brightens, and there's an announcement about the in-flight movie. It's an animated film about a family of ducks, one that Hadley's actually see, and when Oliver groans, shes about to deny the whole thing. But then she twists around in her seat and eyes him critically. "There's nothing wrong with ducks," she tells him, and he rolls his eyes. "Talking ducks?" Hadley grins. "They sing, too." "Don't tell me," he says. "You've already seen it." She holds up two fingers. "Twice." "You do know it's meant for five-year-olds, right?" "Five- to eight-year-olds, thank you very much." "And how old are you again?" "Old enough to appreciate our web-footed friends." "You," he says, laughing in spite of himself, "are a mad as a hatter." "Wait a second," Hadley says in mock horror. "Is that a reference to a...cartoon?" No, genius. It's a reference to a famous work of literature by Lewis Carroll. But once again, I can see how well that American education is working for you.

We need allies who are going to help us achieve a victory, not allies who are going to tell us to be nonviolent. If a white man wants to be your ally, what does he think of John Brown? You know what John Brown did? He went to war. He was a white man who went to war against white people to help free slaves. He wasn’t nonviolent. White people call John Brown a nut. Go read the history, go read what all of them say about John Brown. They’re trying to make it look like he was a nut, a fanatic. They made a movie on it, I saw a movie on the screen one night. Why, I would be afraid to get near John Brown if I go by what other white folks say about him. But they depict him in this image because he was willing to shed blood to free the slaves. And any white man who is ready and willing to shed blood for your freedom—in the sight of other whites, he’s nuts. As long as he wants to come up with some nonviolent action, they go for that, if he’s liberal, a nonviolent liberal, a love-everybody liberal. But when it comes time for making the same kind of contribution for your and my freedom that was necessary for them to make for their own freedom, they back out of the situation. So, when you want to know good white folks in history where black people are concerned, go read the history of John Brown. That was what I call a white liberal. But those other kind, they are questionable. So if we need white allies in this country, we don’t need those kind who compromise. We don’t need those kind who encourage us to be polite, responsible, you know. We don’t need those kind who give us that kind of advice. We don’t need those kind who tell us how to be patient. No, if we want some white allies, we need the kind that John Brown was, or we don’t need you. And the only way to get those kind is to turn in a new direction.

Solara: You know, you say you've been walking for thirty years, right? Eli: Right? Solara: Have you ever thought that maybe you were lost? Eli: Nope. Solara: Well, how do you know that you're walking in the right direction? Eli: I walk by faith, not by sight. Solara: [sighs] What does that mean? Eli: It means that you know something even if you don't know something. Solara: That doesn't make any sense. Eli: It doesn't have to make sense. It's faith, it's faith. It's the flower of light in the field of darkness that's giving me the strength to carry on. You understand? Solara: Is that from your book? Eli: No, it's, uh, Johnny Cash, Live at Folsom Prison.

While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome. Our civilization offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity. Inasmuch as the routine alone does not succeed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others. Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men, guided by the slogans which Huxley formulated so succinctly, such as: “When the individual feels, the community reels”; or “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today,” or, as the crowning statement: “Everybody is happy nowadays.” Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed.

She can outstare anyone, and I am almost as good. We’re impervious, we scintillate, we are thirteen. We wear long wool coats with tie belts, the collars turned up to look like those of movie stars, and rubber boots with the tops folded down and men’s work socks inside. In our pockets are stuffed the kerchiefs our mothers make us wear but that we take off as soon as we’re out of their sight. We scorn head coverings. Our mouths are tough, crayon-red, shiny as nails. We think we are friends.

It wasn’t Dean’s fault,” Allie insists. “Seriously, it’s all on me. I freaked out for no reason.” She finally looks over at me. “See? This is why I don’t like horror movies! You watch one scary movie when you’re a kid and suddenly everyone who comes to your door is a serial killer.” “Are you kidding me right now? You’ll watch a horror movie with my sister but not me? We have to watch the cancer movie?” “Dicky,” Summer chides. “You’re being grumpy.” I glare at my sister with enough force to make her wince. “Not one word out of you,” I snap. “And don’t think I didn’t feel you kick me right before I passed out. Who does that, Summer? Who kicks a man when he’s down?” From the corner of my eye, I see Tucker sink to the floor. He buries his face in his hands, shaking with laughter. The EMT blocks my line of sight by squatting in front of me. “I need to examine you for a concussion.” Oh for fuck’s sake.

You have got to be good in that town if you want to beat the crowd.' So says young John on his first sight of New York City. THE CROWD (1928)

Of that one, I wrote: “Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time.

If there’s one sin that I’d like Hollywood to atone for, it isn’t bolstering the belief in love at first sight or having one true soulmate. It’s in convincing me that the kinds of friendships I saw on the screen were possible in real life. You know the types of friendships I’m talking about. The secret-handshake kind of friendship. The watching-movies-snuggled-under-a-blanket, shared-pint-of-ice-cream kind of friendship. The talk-on-the-phone-for-hours-after-already-spending-the-day-together kind of friendship. The unconditional-love, endless-well-of-support, mutual-kinship kind of friendship. I’m pretty sure those types of friendships are completely manufactured by Hollywood. Because if those friendships really exist, I’ve never been part of one.

Geeks are not the world’s rowdiest people. We’re quiet and introspective, and usually more comfortable communing with our keyboards or a good book than each other. Our idea of how to paint the Emerald City red involves light liquor, heavy munchies, and marathon sessions of video games of the ‘giant robots shooting each other and everything else in sight’ variety. We debate competing lines of software or gaming consoles with passion, and dissect every movie, television show, and novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. With as many of us as there are in this town, people inevitably find ways to cater to us when we get in the mood to spend our hard-earned dollars. Downtown Seattle boasts grandiose geek magnets, like the Experience Music Project and the Experience Science Fiction museum, but it has much humbler and far more obscure attractions too, like the place we all went to for our ship party that evening: a hole-in-the-wall bar called the Electric Penguin on Capitol Hill.

There are forces in the world today, Mr. Winsocki, that are invisibly working to make us all carbon copies of one another. Forces that crush us into molds of each other. You walk down the street and never see anyone’s face, really. You sit faceless in a movie, or hidden from sight in a dreary living room watching television. When you pay bills, or car fares or talk to people, they see the job they’re doing, but never you.

But God, Michael hadn't earned her smile. It wasn't fair. I saw her first. Liz Buxbaum had always been my secret. She was the incredible thing I'd known about but everyone else seemed to miss. The treasure hidden in plain sight, the fortune of a lifetime that was somehow only visible to me. But now Micheal had seen her.

What’s a meet-cute? <> It’s the moment in a movie when the romantic leads meet. They never just meet normally. It’s never like, “Harry, meet Sally. Sally, this is Harry.” They always meet in a cute way, like, “Hey, you just got chocolate in my peanut butter!” / “What are you talking about? You just got peanut butter in my chocolate!

Even earthquakes are the consequence of tensions built up over long spans of time, imperceptibly, incrementally. You don't notice the buildup, just the release. You see a sick person, an old person, a dying person, the sight sinks in, and somewhere down the road you change your life. In movies and novels, people change suddenly and permanently, which is convenient and dramatic but not much like life, where you gain distance on something, relapse, resolve, try again, and move along in stops, starts, and stutters. Change is mostly slow. In my life, there had been transformative events, and I'd had a few sudden illuminations and crises, crossed a rubicon or two, but mostly I'd had the incremental.

Peering up, I marveled at the blue-sky day. The sun was shining, not a cloud in sight. How could my world crumble on such a beautiful afternoon? In the movies, it would be pouring right now, and I’d be stuck without an umbrella. I could have used a good-sized tornado right about then to scoop me up and take me somewhere else. Anywhere far, far away.

Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall we hook up again?

Practicing zazen is like gradually (or maybe not so gradually) getting your sight back.

Never compare your love life from what you read or watched in a movie. Those are carefully thought about, yours on the good will of fate

God exists, and he’s not only a nasty SOB, he’s also a B-movie director with a warped sense of humor. And I don’t want to be his next sight gag.

By his sights, the real movie started after the first one ended, in the impossible return to things before

Instead, it had more to do with the sense that somehow she’d lost sight of the person she’d once meant to be, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever have the opportunity to find that person again.

Her gaze went with her, into a room with walls of frozen earth, and a floor the same, the latter split from corner to corner, and a fissure opened in it from which a flame column rose four or five times the size of a man. There was bitter cold off it rather than heat, and no reassuring flicker in its heart. Instead its innards churned upon themselves, turning over and over some freight of stuff which she failed to recognize at first, but her appalled stare rapidly interpreted. There was a body in the fire, hacked limb from limb, human enough that she recognized it as flesh, but no more than that. Baphomet's doing presumably, some torment visited on a transgressor. Boone said the Baptizer's name even now, and she readied herself for sight of its face. She had it too, but from inside the flame, as the creature there--not dead, but alive, not Midian's subject, but its creator--rolled its head over in the turmoil of flame and looked her way. This was Baphomet. This diced and divided thing. Seeing its face, she screamed. No story or movie screen, no desolation, no bliss, had prepared her for the maker of Midian. Sacred it must be, as anything so extreme must be sacred. A thing beyond things. Beyond love or hatred or their sum, beyond the beautiful or the monstrous or their sum. Beyond, finally, her mind's power to comprehend or catalog.

Certainly, all of us at Callahan's were heir to the tradition of the B-movie — and the A-movie for that matter — that any female who enters your life in a dramatic manner must be your fated love.

I don’t believe in love at first sight or soul mates or any of that guff you see in the movies. You know, where you meet someone in an impossibly coincidental way and you lock eyes and true, everlasting love ensues.

When not through external events, spirit communicates “internally” via symbols and signs. Symbolic language, like music, is universal and crosses beyond the limitations of verbal and written languages. It is a divine communication. Essentially, the Spirit is using All means necessary to inspire us and to get our attention – not an easy task in the material world of sights, sounds, online messages, TV and movies - and commercialism!

Is that really love? When it happens so fast? She sighed. Paused the movie. Sighed again. Some would say it's only love after you've been together long enough to work out who takes out the trash. And there's something to that. That part of love where you have to work at it. Learn to live together. But when you set eyes on that person, it's something. Call it what you want. If it turns into love, then maybe it's just love in all its stages. It's still real

with a head full of acid, the sight of two fantastically obese human beings far gone in a public grope while a thousand cops all around them watched a movie about the "dangers of marijuana" would not be emotionally acceptable. The brain would reject it

Then, on impulse, I scroll back through my previous Instagram posts, looking at the photos of London cafes, sights, drinks, and smiling faces (mostly strangers). The whole thing is like a feel-good movie, and what's wrong with that? Loads of people use colored filters or whatever on Instagram. Well, my filter is the “this is how I'd like it to be” filter. It's not that I lie. I was in those places, even if I couldn't afford a hot chocolate. It's just I don't dwell on any of the not-so-great stuff in my life, like the commute or the prices or having to keep all my stuff in a hammock. Let alone vanilla-whey-coated eggs and abnoxious lechy flatmates. And the point is, it's something to aspire to, something to hope for. One day my life will match my Instagram posts. One day.

When live entertainment was not available, women delivered the film and ran the projectors for the hundreds of movies that were shown to the soldiers. Frances witnessed the popularity of movies time after time; they were shown in warehouses, airplane hangars, on battered portable screens, or projected against the wall of a building in the village square where townsfolk crammed in around the soldiers. “Charlie and Doug” were the two favorites, but anything showing familiar sights from home—the Statue of Liberty, a Chicago department store, or San Francisco’s Golden Gate—created a sensation and bolstered morale. Toward the end of the war German propaganda films left behind by the retreating army became a prime attraction.30 Frances traveled to and from Paris for a few days at a time, usually arriving on or near the front after a battle to witness doctors and nurses doing what they could for the injured in the shattered villages and burying the dead. She was struck by how thoroughly exhausted the Europeans were after four devastating years of war.

At first, our people back home are mildly interested in the faraway stories of the poor, of child marriages, of the hungry. If we throw terrorism or genital mutilation in there, we’re a real hit, satisfying curiosities, flaunting heroism. But if we delve into the nuances of the pain we see, or our role in fostering it, or if we go on too long about a valley on the outskirts of the capital, they lose interest, and we enter the ranks of the verbose. My own husband doesn’t care for these haunts of mine. To him, I disappear into a continent he built out of movie scenes and tragic books, with no sights to behold.

Make me breakfast in the morning?" "So long as you don't leave my sight until then." He grinned. I laughed. Sure, I was crazy about him, but spending the night with him? "Oh really?" "We'll rent a bunch of movies and fill up on popcorn. Maybe snuggle. If you're lucky." "I'm feeling very lucky right now.

With Tommy by his side but Anthony Jr. nowhere to be seen, Anthony cranks out an old 8mm projector, and soon choppy black- and-white images appear on the cream wall capturing a few snapshots from the canyon of their life—that tell nothing, and yet somehow everything. They watch old movies, from 1963, 1952, 1948, 1947—the older, the more raucous the children and parents becoming. This year, because Ingrid isn’t here, Anthony shows them something new. It’s from 1963. A birthday party, this one with happy sound, cake, unlit candles. Anthony is turning twenty. Tatiana is very pregnant with Janie. (“Mommy, look, that’s you in Grammy’s belly!” exclaims Vicky.) Harry toddling around, pursued loudly and relentlessly by Pasha—oh, how in 1999 six children love to see their fathers wild like them, how Mary and Amy love to see their precious husbands small. The delight in the den is abundant. Anthony sits on the patio, bare chested, in swimshorts, one leg draped over the other, playing his guitar, “playing Happy Birthday to myself,” he says now, except it’s not “Happy Birthday.” The joy dims slightly at the sight of their brother, their father so beautiful and whole he hurts their united hearts—and suddenly into the frame, in a mini-dress, walks a tall dark striking woman with endless legs and comes to stand close to Anthony. The camera remains on him because Anthony is singing, while she flicks on her lighter and ignites the candles on his cake; one by one she lights them as he strums his guitar and sings the number one hit of the day, falling into a burning “Ring of Fire ... ” The woman doesn’t look at Anthony, he doesn’t look at her, but in the frame you can see her bare thigh flush against the sole of his bare foot the whole time she lights his twenty candles plus one to grow on. And it burns, burns, burns . . . And when she is done, the camera—which never lies—catches just one microsecond of an exchanged glance before she walks away, just one gram of neutral matter exploding into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT. The reel ends. Next. The budding novelist Rebecca says, “Dad, who was that? Was that Grammy’s friend Vikki?” “Yes,” says Anthony. “That was Grammy’s friend Vikki.” Tak zhivya, bez radosti/bez muki/pomniu ya ushedshiye goda/i tvoi serebryannyiye ruki/v troike yeletevshey navsegda . . . So I live—remembering with sadness all the happy years now gone by, remembering your long and silver arms, forever in the troika that flew by . . . Back

It would be more accurate to say that we see with our brain rather than with our eyes. However, the more interesting point is that the brain does not always need to receive information through the eyes in order to “see.” It can recall sights, sounds, and feelings from memory and run the whole sequence like a movie, all inside our head, in the mind’s eye.

Women in movies from Hollywood's golden era dressed the way my mother did now. My entire childhood, she'd shown up at PTA meeting in bust-hugging sequins, the sight of which gave my father complicated facial twitches. She was flamboyant, really, in no other way. There was nothing Auntie Mame about her. Unless Auntie Mame had a penchant for public collapse.

It is more fun to listen to the radio speeches of a dictator than to study economic treatises. The entrepreneurs and technologists who pave the way for economic improvement work in seclusion; their work is not suitable to be visualized on the screen. But the dictators, intent upon spreading death and destruction, are spectacularly in sight of the public. Dressed in military garb they eclipse in the eyes of the movie-goers the colourless bourgeois in plain clothes. The problems of society's economic organization are not suitable for light talk at fashionable cocktail parties. Neither can they be dealt with adequately by demagogues haranguing mass assemblies. They are serious things. They require painstaking study. They must not be taken lightly.

The way I feel about you, Jacinda...I know you feel it, too." He stares at me so starkly, so hungrily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do," I admit. But I don't understand him. Don't get why he should feel this way about me. Why should he want me so much? What do I offer him? Why did he save me that day in the mountains? And why does he pursue me now? When no girl spiked his interest before? "Good," he says. "Then how about a date?" "A date?" I repeat, like I've never heard the word. "Yeah. A real date. Something official. You. Me. Tonight. We're long overdue." His smile deepens, revealing the deep grooves on the sides of his cheeks. "Dinner. Movie. Popcorn." "Yes." The word slips past. For a moment I forget. Forget that I'm not an ordinary girl. That he's not an ordinary boy. For the first time, I understand Tamra. And the appeal of normal. "Yes." It feels good to say it. To pretend. To drink in the sight of him and forget there's an ulterior reason I need to go out with him. A reason that's going to tear us apart forever. Stupid. Did you think you might have a future with him? Mom's right. Time to grow up. He smiles. Then he's gone. Out the door. For a second, I'm confused. Then he's at my door, opening it, helping me out. Together we walk through the parking lot. Side by side. We move only a few feet before he slips his hand around mine. As we near the front of the building, I see several kids hanging out around the flagpole. Tamra with her usual crowd. Brooklyn at the head. I try to tug my hand free. His fingers tighten on mine. I glance at him, see the resolve in his eyes. His hazel eyes glint brightly in the already too hot morning. "Coward." "Oh." The single sound escapes me. Outrage. Indignation. I stop. Turn and face him. Feel something slip, give way, and crumble loose inside me. Set free, it propels me. Standing on my tiptoes, I circle my hand around his neck and pull his face down to mine. Kiss him. Right there in front of the school. Reckless. Stupid. I stake a claim on him like I've got something to prove, like a drake standing before the pride in a bonding ceremony. But then I forget our audience. Forget everything but the dry heat of our lips. My lungs tighten, contract. I feel my skin shimmer, warm as my lungs catch. Crackling heat works its way up my chest. Not the smartest move I've ever made.

You lean into life. Even now, even when you're being hunted by the Lions, you gape at the streets of Edinburgh, light up over the sight of a Christmas tree in a hotel lobby, ask five thousand questions about the Scottish countryside, and plan movie nights with enthusiasm. It's not just about the end goal for you; you look at the everyday world like it's something special, and you make me see it that way, too.

In the meantime, she and Jay sat shoulder to shoulder throughout the movie, and the warmth of his pressed up against her made it difficult for Violet to concentrate. She tried to remember when exactly he’d started to smell so good to her, or when his touch had become like a mood-altering narcotic. She glanced sideways to see if she could tell what he was thinking, if their casual contact was affecting him the way it was her, but his face was blank, completely unreadable, as he watched the action on the oversized screen. She leaned toward him and whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom.” She stood up to go. And so did he. She gave him a questioning look. “I’ll be right back,” she said quietly. He followed right behind her. “What are you doing?” She was starting to get irritated. “I’m going with you.” “Yeah, I got that,” she said, her voice getting louder now. “Why?” He pushed her along from behind until they were out of the darkened theater and standing in the dimly lit hallway. “I can go to the bathroom by myself,” she insisted, putting her hands on her hips and cocking her head to the side. “No, Violet. You can’t. I told your parents I wouldn’t let you out of my sight, and I meant it. Besides, until you decide to stop hunting for this guy, I’m not letting you do anything by yourself.” That stubborn set to his jaw was back. “Now, hurry up,” he said as he leaned casually against the wall outside the ladies’ room. Violet didn’t want to water her time arguing, so she just shook her head as she opened the door. “You’re crazy! You know that, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer as she disappeared into the empty bathroom, but she swore she heard the sound of his laughter following her inside.

One thing I have noticed about sensitive souls is that they appear to be fragile. They break down crying at the sight of a dead cat on the side of the road. They can’t stand the thought of killing spiders – and rightly so.” She sat back in her chair. “A sensitive soul steers clear of bad news, depressing movies, and books with sad endings because they feel the pain of the souls suffering these tragedies – they feel it as if it were their own.

To this day, I can see the bright, raspberry red glow. The reactor seemed lit up from inside. It was an incredible colour. Not an ordinary fire, but a kind of shining. Very pretty. If you forget all the rest, it was very pretty. I’d never seen anything like it in the movies, there was just nothing comparable. In the evening, everyone came out on to their balconies; if they didn’t have one, they went to their friends and neighbours. We were on the eighth floor and had a great view. About three kilometres as the crow flies. People brought out their children and lifted them up. ‘Look! Don’t forget this!’ And these were people who worked at the reactor: engineers, workmen. There were even physics teachers, standing in that black dust, chatting away. Breathing it in. Admiring the sight. Some people drove dozens of kilometres or cycled to see it. We had no idea death could look so pretty.

What do you know of love? You've been watching too many Hindi movies. Love is something you grow into over the years. Love is like a plant. It needs time and effort to raise it. You need to let the roots grow deep and strong before the stem is thick enough to support the leaves and branches. Only when the plant is full grown do you get the flowers and fruit of love. Your love is just a seedling. Ignore it and it will die away. You're mistaking lust for love.

Do you believe in love at first sight?” He made himself look at her face, at her wide-open eyes and earnest forehead. At her unbearably sweet mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you believe in love before that?” Her breath caught in her throat like a sore hiccup. And then it was too much to keep trying not to kiss her. She came readily into his arms. Lincoln leaned against the coffee machine and pulled her onto him completely. There it was again, that impossible to describe kiss. This is how 2011 should have ended, he thought. This is infinity. The first time Beth pulled away, he pulled her back. The second time, he bit her lip. Then her neck. Then the collar of her shirt. “I don’t know…,” she said, sitting up in his lap, laying her check on the top of his head. “I don’t know what you meant by love before love at first sight.” Lincoln pushed his face into her shoulder and tried to think of a good way to answer. “Just that… I knew how I felt about you before I ever saw you,” he said, “when I still thought I might never see you…” She held his head in her hands and titled it back, so she could see his face. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. Which made him laugh. “Absolutely,” he said. “No, I mean it,” Beth said. “Men fall in love with their eyes.” He closed his. “That’s practically science,” she said. “Maybe,” Lincoln said. Her fingers felt so good in his hair. “But I couldn’t see you, so…” “So, what did you see?” “Just…the sort of girl who would write the sort of things that you wrote.” “What things?” Lincoln opened his eyes. Beth was studying his face. She looked skeptical-maybe about more than just the last thing he said. This was important, he realized. “Everything,” he said, sitting straighter, keeping hold of her waist. “Everything you wrote about your work, about your boyfriend…The way you comforted Jennifer and made her laugh, through the baby and after. I pictured a girl who could be kind, and that kind of funny. I pictured a girl who was that alive…” She looked guarded. Lincoln couldn’t tell from her eyes whether he was pushing her away or winning her over. “A girl who never got tired of her favourite movies,” he said softly. “Who saved dresses like ticket stubs. Who could get high on the weather.. “I pictured a girl who made every moment, everything she touched, and everyone around her feel lighter and sweeter. I pictured you,” he said. “I just didn’t know what you looked like. And then, when I did know what you looked like, you looked like the girl who was all those things. You looked like the girl I loved.” Beth’s fingers trembled in his hair, and her forehead dropped against his. A heavy, wet tear fell onto Lincoln’s lips, and he licked it. He pulled her close, as close as he could. Like he didn’t care for the moment whether she could breath. Like there were two of them and only one parachute. “Beth,” he barely said, pressing his face against hers until their lashes brushed, pressing his hand into the small of her back. “I don’t think I can explain it. I don’t think I can make any more sense. But I’ll keep trying. If you want me to.” She almost shook her head. “No,” she said, “no more explaining. Or apologizing. I don’t think it matters how we ended up here. I just…I want to stay…I want.. He kissed her then. There. In the middle of the sentence.

Joy studied movies because she had to. She literally thought everyone was making sexual attraction up. She'd heard countless people describe it, read literally hundreds of romance novels -- there's never any feelings low in her belly, no shivers down her spine. She doesn't have to cross her legs at the sight of veiny forearms, perky breasts, bubble butts, or perfect abs. It just doesn't happen. The day she realized it was, in fact, a very real thing absolutely blew her mind.

The colder and more crass the world has become, the more it scoffs at love at first sight. Popular television shows which would have made your grandmother puke, blockbuster movies so banal, vulgar, unfunny and shallow that only the brain-dead could find enjoyment in them, and best-selling fiction featuring either graphic descriptions of brutal, stomach-churning violence, or sexual depravity that drew no lines, had become completely acceptable, even the norm in our desensitized society.

I like fighting and I like killing,” Boomerang said, and he laughed. “And when I kill I feel good. So your theory’s all shot to hell.” “But that blissful feeling is only temporary. Kills are like drugs. You need more and more to get that same feeling again. Today it’s one kill. Tomorrow two. Next week it’ll take a dozen. Not only is there no end in sight, but after a while you forget why you ever started. Your need for relief, rather than your intellect, takes over—and it is insatiable.

She rambled on and on about how my attending a new private school was going to be a “stressful time of tremendous personal growth” and how my best “coping mechanism” would be to “communicate” my “thoughts and feelings.” I was absolutely ECSTATIC because you can communicate with a NEW CELL PHONE! Right?! I kind of zoned out on most of what my mom was saying because I was DAYDREAMING about all of the cool ring tones, music, and movies I was going to download. It was going to be LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT!

Overcoming deficits is an essential part of the fabric of our culture. Our books, movies, and folklore are filled with stories of the underdog who beats one-in-a-million odds. And this leads us to celebrate those who triumph over their lack of natural ability even more than we recognize those who capitalize on their innate talents. As a result, millions of people see these heroes as being the epitome of the American Dream and set their sights on conquering major challenges. Unfortunately, this is taking the path of most resistance.

sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it. François Truffaut said that for a director it was an inspiring sight to walk to the front of a movie theater, turn around, and look back at the faces of the audience, turned up to the light from the screen. If the film is any good, those faces reflect an out-of-the-body experience: The audience for a brief time is somewhere else, sometime else, concerned with lives that are not its own. Of all the arts, movies are

They both, indeed, made so many protestations about the sight of New York harbor that Sam began to wonder whether he really was going to be as thrilled as he was going to be thrilled. He remembered how, after the most conversational anticipation with Fran, he had been disappointed by his first sight of Notre Dame. It had seemed low and hulking--not half so impressive as the lath- and-plaster Notre Dame in the movie film. He managed to fret rather ardently. He hoped to be uplifted by New York as a young lover hopes to be enraptured by the sight of his lady.

For some reason, I think of Naukeag Lake. Movie night at Naukeag Lake with Ma before it became members-only. We used to sit there on a blanket on the hard sand watching some Gene Wilder vehicle with the other locals. I was maybe six or seven, my sisters not yet on the scene. We both loved that stupid lake. It had terrible circulation and was riddled with nuisance algae even back in the ’70s. Dragonflies buzzed around the duckweed, laying their eggs, their bodies brighter green than beetles, brighter green than June itself. I remember Ma’s delighted face in the projector light. Happiness—rare as it is, fragile as it is, its sightings achieve a kind of private fame. Look, here I am, still talking about it.

But that is the brilliant thing about New York. Addie has wandered a fair portion of the five boroughs, and the city still has its secrets, some tucked in corners—basement bars, speakeasies, members-only clubs—and others sitting in plain sight. Like easter eggs in a movie, the ones you don’t notice until the second or third viewing. And not like Easter eggs at all, because no matter how many times she walks these blocks, no matter how many hours, or days, or years she spends learning the contour of New York, as soon as she turns her back it seems to shift again, reassemble. Buildings go up and come down, businesses open and close, people arrive and depart and the deck shuffles itself again and again and again.

No, they were not real. TV monsters and movie monsters and comic-book monsters were not real. Not until you went to bed and couldn’t sleep; not until the last four pieces of candy, wrapped in tissues and kept under your pillow against the evils of the night, were gobbled up; not until the bed itself turned into a lake of rancid dreams and the wind screamed outside and you were afraid to look at the window because there might be a face there, an ancient grinning face that had not rotted but simply dried like an old leaf, its eyes sunken diamonds pushed deep into dark sockets; not until you saw one ripped and clawlike hand holding out a bunch of balloons: See the sights, have a balloon, feed the elephants, ride the Chute-the-Chutes! Ben, oh, Ben, how you’ll float—

na kept her head down and pulled Lockie out into the street. She hoped he would manage to avoid standing on anything. His bare feet were already filthy but the streets of the Cross held the worst bits of human detritus. Tina didn’t want to have to deal with a piece of glass in Lockie’s foot, or worse. He was walking on tiptoe and more than one adult stopped to look at them. Tina moved quickly, getting Lockie out of sight before the questions had time to form. People tended to ask a lot more questions in the daytime. They saw things more clearly. Tina preferred the dark, where it was easy to hide.She had no idea what she was going to do with the kid after the new clothes and a shower. Maybe if he was warm and fed he would agree to walk into the police station and tell his story. Maybe he just needed a little time. He looked like a thinker. It was possible that she was really fucking up by keeping him. She had no idea what his body had been through. He could drop dead right now or have some kind of psycho meltdown.He looked at the ground as he walked. He held her hand and she guided him around the obstacles. He would not look up.He was locked up inside himself. His body was doing what it needed to do and maybe somewhere in his mind he was trying to find a key. If she got him to go to the police they would bring in a counsellor. Someone with a box of dolls and a soft voice. She had seen a movie about it. Lockie would be able to point to the doll and tell everyone exactly how his childhood had been taken. But would that help? Tina hoped he would be ready to talk to the police soon. If he wasn’t she was really screwed.

Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men, guided by the slogans which Huxley formulated so succinctly, such as: “When the individual feels, the community reels”; or “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today,” or, as the crowning statement: “Everybody is happy nowadays.” Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption.

I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

During homeroom, before first period, I start a bucket list in one of my notebooks. First on the list? 1) Eat in the cafeteria. Sit with people. TALK TO THEM. 2) And…that’s all I can come up with for now. But this is good. One task to work on. No distractions. I can do this. When my lunch period rolls around, I forgo the safety of my bag lunch and the computer lab and slip into the pizza line, wielding my very own tray of semi-edible fare for the first time in years. “A truly remarkable sight.” Jensen cuts into line beside me, sliding his tray next to mine on the ledge in front of us. He lifts his hands and frames me with his fingers, like he’s shooting a movie. “In search of food, the elusive creature emerges from her den and tries her luck at the watering hole." I shake my head, smiling, moving down the line. “Wow, Peters. I never knew you were such a huge Animal Planet fan.” “I’m a fan of all things nature. Birds. Bees. The like.” He grabs two pudding cups and drops one on my tray. “Pandas?” I say. “How did you know? The panda is my spirit animal.” “Oh, good, because Gran has this great pattern for an embroidered panda cardigan. It would look amazing on you.” “Um, yeah, I know. It was on my Christmas list, but Santa totally stiffed me." I laugh as I grab a carton of milk. So does he. He leans in closer. “Come sit with me.” “At the jock table? Are you kidding?” I hand the cashier my lunch card. Jensen squints his eyes in the direction of his friends. “We’re skinny-ass basketball players, Wayfare. We don’t really scream jock.” “Meatheads, then?” “I believe the correct term is Athletic Types.” We step out from the line and scan the room. “So where were you planning on sitting?" “I was thinking Grady and Marco were my safest bet.” “The nerd table?” I gesture to myself, especially my glasses. “I figure my natural camouflage will help me blend, yo.” He laughs, his honey-blond hair falling in front of his eyes. “And hey,” I say, nudging him with my elbow, “last I heard, Peters was cool with nerdy.” He claps me gently on the back. “Good luck, Wayfare. I’m pulling for ya.

Nope. Look. The Raft is a media event. But in a much more profound, general sense than you can possibly imagine." "Huh?" "It's created by the media in that without the media, people wouldn't know it was here, Refus wouldn't come out and glom onto it the way they do. And it sustains the media. It creates a lot of information flow-movies, news reports - - you know." "So you're creating your own news event to make money off the information flow that it creates?" says the journalist, desperately trying to follow. His tone of voice says that this is all a waste of videotape. His weary attitude suggests that this is not the first time Rife has flown off on a bizarre tangent. "Partly. But that's only a very crude explanation. It really goes a lot deeper than that. You've probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean." "I've heard the expression, yes." "That's my expression. I made it up. An expression like that is just like a virus, you know -- it's a piece of information -- data -- that spreads from one person to the next. Well, the function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking, smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. Leaves behind a trail of garbage a mile wide. Always needs more fuel... "Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier." Finally the journalist gives up on being a journalist, just starts to slag L. Bob Rife openly. He's had it with this guy. "That's disgusting. I can't believe you can think about people that way." "Shit, boy, get down off your high horse. Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?

The only thing I knew about pickups was this: growing up, I always inwardly mocked the couples I saw who drove around in them. The girl would be sitting in the middle seat right next to the boy, and the boy’s right arm would be around her shoulders, and his left arm would be on the wheel. I’m not sure why, but there was something about my golf course upbringing that had always caused me to recoil at this sight. Why is she sitting in the middle seat? I’d wonder. Why is it important that they press against each other as they drive down the road? Can’t they wait until they get home? I looked at it as a sign of weakness--something pitiable. They need to get a life may have even crossed my mind once or twice, as if their specific brand of public affection was somehow directly harming me. But that’s what happens to people who, by virtue of the geography of their childhood, are deprived of the opportunity to ride in pickup trucks. They become really, really judgmental about otherwise benign things. Still, every now and then, as Marlboro Man showed me the beauty of the country in his white Ford F250, I couldn’t help but wonder…had he been one of those boys in high school? I knew he’d had a serious girlfriend back in his teenage years. Julie. A beautiful girl and the love of his adolescent life, in the same way Kev had been mine. And I wondered: had Julie scooched over to the middle seat when Marlboro Man picked her up every Friday night? Had he hooked his right arm around her neck, and had she then reached her left hand up and clasped his right hand with hers? Had they then dragged Main in this position? Our hometowns had been only forty miles apart; maybe he’d brought her to my city to see a movie. Was it remotely possible I’d actually seen Marlboro Man and Julie riding around in his pickup, sitting side by side? Was it possible this man, this beautiful, miraculous, perfect man who’d dropped so magically into my life, had actually been one of the innocent recipients of my intolerant, shallow pickup-related condemnation? And if he had done it, was it something he’d merely grown out of? How come I wasn’t riding around in his middle seat? Was I supposed to initiate this? Was this expected of me? Because I probably should know early on. But wouldn’t he have gestured in that direction if he’d wanted me to move over and sit next to him? Maybe, just maybe, he’d liked those girls better than he liked me. Maybe they’d had a closeness that warranted their riding side by side in a pickup, a closeness that he and I just don’t share? Please don’t let that be the reason. I don’t like that reason. I had to ask him. I had to know.

He removed his hand from his worn, pleasantly snug jeans…and it held something small. Holy Lord, I said to myself. What in the name of kingdom come is going on here? His face wore a sweet, sweet smile. I stood there completely frozen. “Um…what?” I asked. I could formulate no words but these. He didn’t respond immediately. Instead he took my left hand in his, opened up my fingers, and placed a diamond ring onto my palm, which was, by now, beginning to sweat. “I said,” he closed my hand tightly around the ring. “I want you to marry me.” He paused for a moment. “If you need time to think about it, I’ll understand.” His hands were still wrapped around my knuckles. He touched his forehead to mine, and the ligaments of my knees turned to spaghetti. Marry you? My mind raced a mile a minute. Ten miles a second. I had three million thoughts all at once, and my heart thumped wildly in my chest. Marry you? But then I’d have to cut my hair short. Married women have short hair, and they get it fixed at the beauty shop. Marry you? But then I’d have to make casseroles. Marry you? But then I’d have to wear yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes. Marry you? As in, move out to the country and actually live with you? In your house? In the country? But I…I…I don’t live in the country. I don’t know how. I can’t ride a horse. I’m scared of spiders. I forced myself to speak again. “Um…what?” I repeated, a touch of frantic urgency to my voice. “You heard me,” Marlboro Man said, still smiling. He knew this would catch me by surprise. Just then my brother Mike laid on the horn again. He leaned out of the window and yelled at the top of his lungs, “C’mon! I am gonna b-b-be late for lunch!” Mike didn’t like being late. Marlboro Man laughed. “Be right there, Mike!” I would have laughed, too, at the hilarious scene playing out before my eyes. A ring. A proposal. My developmentally disabled and highly impatient brother Mike, waiting for Marlboro Man to drive him to the mall. The horn of the diesel pickup. Normally, I would have laughed. But this time I was way, way too stunned. “I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

unceremoniously as “John F. Kennedy: The Photographic Archive of Cecil W. Stoughton.” I knew—even sight unseen—that this was no ordinary scrapbook collection of scratchy Polaroids and faded albums. No, this might be the treasure trove of one of Camelot’s court photographers, a man who had visually documented some of the most important events in the presidency of John F. Kennedy, including a secret party in New York City attended by the president and the most glamorous movie star of the time: Marilyn Monroe.

Try to imagine or recall each of the following items: SIGHT Visualize the largest drinking glass in your kitchen cupboard. Recall the interior of the last car you rode in. See your favorite flower in bloom. Visualize the spots on a leopard. Which of your friends wears the brightest-colored clothes? See your favorite actor on a movie screen wearing a very revealing bathing suit. SOUND Hear a dog barking in the distance. Hear a car alarm right outside your door. Recall the voice of your favorite grade-school teacher. Listen to a familiar melody.

She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen. There at last were the darkened woods, the lonely roads, the river banks, the gentle knowing eyes. There the flawed became whole, the blind sighted, and the lame and halt threw away their crutches. There death was dead, and people made every gesture in a cloud of music. There the black-and-white images came together, making a magnificent whole—all projected through the ray of light from above and behind. It was really a simple pleasure, but she learned all there was to love and all there was to hate.

Rouhani, was elected in 2013. Obama had set his sights on working out a deal with the mad mullahs as early as 2008. You mean he came into office to do the deal? Now you got the rest of the story. He was handpicked to do the deal. Where did this unknown ghost come from? This man, this administration, was handpicked by foreign powers that manipulated him into the presidency. Because of the liars in the media, he has been able to get away with virtual murder. The murder of the truth, the murder of our national security. I know many lives were, let us say, seriously challenged during the HUAC hearings of the McCarthy era, but I want to ask you something. Have you read the Venona papers? The Soviet-era secret correspondence that came out a little over two decades ago, which confirmed that almost everything that Joseph McCarthy had been saying about the news media and Hollywood was true? That there were communists who were openly subverting America? Can anyone tell me the name of someone whose life was actually ruined by HUAC who was not really working to subvert America, who was not really a communist or fellow traveler? I’d like to know whose life was ruined. I think it’s a myth that lives of innocent people were ruined. I know there were movies made, I remember The Front with Zero Mostel, in which he played an innocent actor who jumped out of a window because the House Un-American Activities Committee was after him. Hollywood has made many, many movies about the blacklist. We hear about the blacklist. But how many innocent people’s lives were actually ruined? The operative word here is innocent. I’d like to know their names.

If you go to the movies to escape the adversities of real life, your problems are still there waiting for you when you leave the theater. Out of sight, in other words, isn’t actually out of mind, because the negative feelings remain, eagerly waiting to be activated again.

Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier—we can care deeply, selflessly for people we know, but our empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.

I don’t believe in love at first sight or soul mates or any of that guff you see in the movies. You know, where you meet someone in an impossibly coincidental way and you lock eyes and true, everlasting love ensues.

My Seclusion Just like, I remember the- Fireflies at night, they all carry their- own light in flight. They fly higher and higher until they are out of sight. They are never in fear of the darkness because they carry their light. They constantly have hope, and it shines brightly. The firefly flies by, unlike me there are never shy. I am lying outside on the grounds a few feet from my home, yet I am still feeling all alone, listening to all the sounds of the night as they moan. I look at the full moon, knowing that I will be back in hell soon, seeing all the faces at lunch at noon. Wondering what is going to happen on my vacation in the upcoming summer in the months like in June. I lie on the cold hard ground outside looking up with the stars in the sky, remembering all the days flashing that have gone by, seeing all the faces that never even say hi, remembering the terror from the wandering eyes. (Right now) My head is pounding just like the thunder and lightning, the evil faces streaks crossed my face, with every bolt of lightning. This takes me back to when I was a little girl; I hope that the pink suspended feathers sweep them away in the white webs. So, I can have a sunny day on all these rainy days that seem to never end, I just do not have much to say. I am not safe anywhere… the voices haunt me as they do. However, I just have an overwhelming urge to cry, all night and watch movies by myself. Like, I have done, these last two years of my high school life. Is anything going to change? Why must I live like this? Why do I keep living? Why can I not just pass on? I look out my window, and sometimes it takes me back to when I was young. Some days I look out the window and the skies are scarlet, and that reminds me that I should be out doing things with people of my age. The summer has come and gone, and the school days have started with no one to see me, or even ask if I was alive. No one cares! Is the plan going to work? I have no idea at this point, yet I keep trying!

Charlie’s kisses, were, I suppose, in The Book of Kisses. But they’d be in the chapter called Devouring. There was biting and gnawing and teeth-banging in them, an urgent air of mouth-to-mouth combat, wild and violent and driving to an end that was out of reach, and known to be, but only the more pressing for that. And pressing was a big part of it. She pulled me against her in a mime of movie stars, but the three-dimensionality of our bodies made a bumping mockery of blending, elbows and knees proving extra to the parts required and noses on standby with an abashed air of being in the way. Of course, I was lost from the first moment, in a whirl carousel of taste touch sight smell, and sounds (all s’s – squelch,

Then in March 1993, everything changed. My one-year-old son, Charlie, had his first seizure. There’s absolutely nothing funny about being the parent of a child with uncontrolled epilepsy. Nothing. After a year of daily seizures, drugs, and a brain surgery, I learned that the cure for Charlie’s epilepsy, the ketogenic diet—a high fat, no sugar, limited protein diet—had been hiding in plain sight for, by then, over seventy years. And despite the diet’s being well documented in medical texts, none of the half-dozen pediatric neurologists we had taken Charlie to see had mentioned a word about it. I found out on my own at a medical library. It was life altering—not just for Charlie and my family, but for tens of thousands like us. Turns out there are powerful forces at work within our health care system that don’t necessarily prioritize good health. For decades, physicians have barely been taught diet therapy or even nutrition in medical school. The pharmaceutical, medical device, and sugar industries make hundreds of billions every year on anti-epileptic drugs and processed foods—but not a nickel if we change what we eat. The cardiology community and American Heart Association demonize fat based on flawed science. Hospitals profit from tests and procedures, but again no money from diet therapy. There is a world epilepsy population of over sixty million people. Most of those people begin having their seizures as children, and only a minuscule percentage ever find out about ketogenic diet therapies. When I realized that 99 percent of what had happened to Charlie and my family was unnecessary, and that there were millions of families worldwide in the same situation, I needed to try to do something. Nancy and I began the Charlie Foundation (charliefoundation.org) in 1994 in order to facilitate research and get the word directly to those who would benefit. Among the high points were countless articles, a couple appearances of Charlie’s story on Dateline NBC, and a movie I produced and directed about another family whose child’s epilepsy had been cured by the ketogenic diet starring Meryl Streep titled First Do No Harm (1997). Today, of course, the diet permeates social media. When we started, there was one hospital in the world offering ketogenic diet therapy. Today, there are 250. Equally important, word about the efficacy of the ketogenic diet for epilepsy spread within the scientific community. In 1995, we hosted the first of many scientific global symposia focused on the diet. As research into its mechanisms and applications has spiked, incredibly the professional communities have found the same metabolic pathway that is triggered by the ketogenic diet to reduce seizures has also been found to benefit Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, severe psychiatric disorders, traumatic brain injury, and even some cancers. I

IF THERE’S ONE SIN THAT I’D LIKE HOLLYWOOD TO ATONE for, it isn’t bolstering the belief in love at first sight or having one true soulmate. It’s in convincing me that the kinds of friendships I saw on the screen were possible in real life. You know the types of friendships I’m talking about. The secret-handshake kind of friendship. The watching-movies-snuggled-under-a-blanket, shared-pint-of-ice-cream kind of friendship. The talk-on-the-phone-for-hours-afteralready-spending-the-day-together kind of friendship. The unconditional-love, endless-well-of-support, mutual-kinship kind of friendship. I’m pretty sure those types of friendships are completely manufactured by Hollywood. Because if those friendships really exist, I’ve never been part of one.

But what actually made that movie great was the sight of an action hero, at his darkest moment, thinking he’d lost everyone he loved and failed them beyond recognition, weeping tears of grief. You never see that, ever. That’s what made that movie a classic. That’s what made it better than all the hundreds of others just like it—that raw, human moment of vulnerability coming from the last guy you’d ever expect. It made us all want to be better people. It made us all love him—and humanity—just a little bit more. Anyway. This scene in the reception area was a little like that. But with ficus plants.

Do you believe in love at first sight? I don't know but it saves an awful lot of time

There’s a certain tear-jerking way that some people can go slowly wide-eyed before any entertainment. I watch them at movies and in shows sometimes, and if the action is good, their shoulders will slope and they turn right into open-mouthed children. Some of them are so old you wouldn’t think anything could get through to them, but the sight of one of them seen from a few feet behind, catching the glow from stage or screen lights, hits me as a miracle every time.

Reviews were scathing—most criticized its too-fast pacing, and overreliance on slapstick and sight gags, both of which had been intentional on Lucas’s part. But Lucas brushed off the criticism. “It came out almost exactly or even better than I hoped it would come out,” he told reporters defiantly.149 “I like my movies, and I’m always surprised if they do very well or do terribly. But Radioland Murders was inexpensive and we learned quite a bit.

The sight of a palm tree silhouetted against the sky made even his life feel like a movie

With his left hand Victor pulled the Beretta from the back of his waistband and pointed both guns at the doorway, one in each hand. Not so good for aiming accurately but he needed the extra stopping power if he was going to drop the gunman before he could open fire. He was a big guy and neither subsonic 5.7 mm or 9 mm rounds were going to guarantee putting him down instantly unless he was shot in the head, heart, or spine. But with enough bullets it wouldn’t matter where Victor hit. He held the Beretta directly below the FN so he could still line up one set of sights. Victor had seen amateurs hold two guns at arm’s length, hands shoulder-width apart, trying to emulate their favourite action movie stars. They always died quickly

To call it a dungeon would be an insult. The women I played with came willingly, in more ways than one. It wasn’t a room out of a lame BDSM movie. The equipment was hidden in plain sight, and the room could look as innocent to an observer as it did dirty to someone who knew their shit.

The most significant source of my adolescent period anxiety was the fact that, in America in 2016 (and far more so in 1993), acknowledging the completely normal and mundane function of most uteruses is still taboo. The taboo is so strong that it contributes to the widespread stonewalling of women from seats of power - for fear that, as her first act in the White House, Hillary might change Presidents' Day to Brownie Batter Makes the Boo-Hoos Stop Day. The taboo is strong enough that a dude once broke up with me because a surprise period started while we were having sex and the sight of it shattered some pornified illusion he had of women as messless pleasure pillows. The taboo is so strong that while we've all seen swimming pools of blood shed in horror movies and action movies and even on the news, when a woman ran the 2015 London Marathon without a tampon, photos of blood spotting her running gear made the social media rounds to near-universal disgust. The blood is the same - the only difference is where it's coming from. The disgust is at women's natural bodies, not at blood itself.

We cross a bridge, and all of us girls gasp in unison and crane our necks to the right-hand window of the car, pushing each other to get a sight of Florence by night--the dark velvety river lit up with glittering lights; narrow bridges farther down, the famous one with all the houses on it clustered tight together; a cathedral dome, terra-cotta and white, rising above the marble buildings, illuminated with soft spotlights, exactly like-- “Oh, it’s like a movie!” Paige exclaims in delight. “A Room with a View,” Kendra agrees. “I love that movie.” I do too; I think the bit where Julian Sands goes up to Helena Bonham Carter in the cornfield and kisses her is one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen. I’m just about to agree, when Luca says, “Oh, yes. Italy is very romantic,” so dryly that the words die on my lips. His accent’s light, his English seems very good. “Lots of corruption, lots of bribes. Very romantic.” “Well, he’s a load of fun, isn’t he?” Paige says in my ear.

Do you actually hear confessions in your church, Father, actual spoken confessions? For that matter, does any priest anymore, at least as the movies depict them, the little lattice between confessor and penitent, its delicate chiaroscuro screening the priest's profile and veiling the lips of the sinner? Surely Freud himself, when he positioned himself behind and out of sight of his recumbent patients, sought a similar partial anonymity. How we analysts must envy you, your belief in redress, in the promise of absolution and redemption. How clean the words sound compared to our own impure remedies: recollection, interpretation, speculation, suggestion. Strange, isn't it, how we have both sealed ourselves in small, half-lit chambers, both in the service of gods who share nothing but the name of Love.

I can’t bear to watch the television news. Or war documentaries. Or movies like ‘Titanic’. They are too intense, too upsetting, an assault and battery on the feeling cognisance. It is simply too much negative emotion for me to process all at once; it floods my senses and sits on my mind like a bloated, malevolent ghost waiting to pounce. Even newspapers have this effect of leaving me feeling low and fearful, so I dare not peruse them, least I catch sight of a headline of some disaster or other.