Slack Famous Quotes

The properties of the renewal tissues enabled the original definition of stem cell behaviour in terms of the ability to self-renew and to generate differentiated progeny. But the most famous stem cell of them all is now the embryonic stem cell (ES cell). In one sense, the ES cell is the iconic stem cell. It is the type of stem cell that has attracted all of the ethical controversy, and it is what lay people are thinking of when they refer to ‘stem cell research’. But ironically, the embryonic stem cell does not exist in nature. It is a creature that has been created by mankind and exists only in the world of tissue culture: the growth of cells in flasks in the laboratory, kept in temperature-controlled incubators, exposed to controlled concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and nourished by complex artificial media. Cells grown in culture are often referred to by the Latin phrase in vitro (in glass, since the relevant containers used to be made of glass) and distinguished from in vivo (inside the living body).

November We walk to the ward from the badly parked car with your grandma taking four short steps to our two. We have brought her here to die and we know it. You check her towel. soap and family trinkets, pare her nails, parcel her in the rough blankets and she sinks down into her incontinence. It is time John. In their pasty bloodless smiles, in their slack breasts, their stunned brains and their baldness and in us John: we are almost these monsters. You're shattered. You give me the keys and I drive through the twilight zone, past the famous station to your house, to numb ourselves with alcohol. Inside, we feel the terror of the dusk begin. Outside we watch the evening, failing again, and we let it happen. We can say nothing. Sometimes the sun spangles and we feel alive. One thing we have to get, John, out of this life.

So anyway, we took our seats, and I can’t remember how far we’d got through the meal when we became aware of a kerfuffle at the door and turned to see that His Royal Highness Sir Richard Branson was arriving. And he was very, very drunk. Now, by this time we’d already had our fill of Sir Richard, because earlier in the day he’d arrived at the circuit with all the pomp and ceremony of a returning hero. With a bevy of flag-bearing dolly birds in his wake, he’d marched up and down the paddock, waving, grinning and giving the thumbs up to his adoring public, who were, in fact, wondering what he was doing there in the first place. The reason, of course, was that he had a couple of stickers on our car. A million bucks’ worth of sponsorship, which is a lot of money but in F1 sponsorship terms, chicken feed. And yet he was behaving as though he had bank-rolled the whole thing. I can’t say he’d won a lot of admirers with that stunt, but at the end of the day he’s national treasure Sir Richard Branson, famous publicity seeker, so you cut him some slack. It’d be like hating a dog for barking at the telly. They can’t help it. It’s just what they do. What he did in the restaurant was less excusable. However, before I go on, it’s only right and proper for me to point out that he apologised for what happened that night, and even said that he gave up drinking for months afterwards. Not only that, but the press had a field day at the time and no Branson blush was spared. With all that penance paid you might think that he’s done his time and by rights I should leave out this story.

People often shit themselves when they die. Their muscles slack and their souls flutter free and everything else just...slips out. For all their audience's love of death, the playwrights seldom mention it. When our hero breathes his last in his heroine's arms, they call no attention to the stain leaking across his tights, or how the stink makes her eyes water as she leans in for her farewell kiss. I mention this by way of warning, O, my gentlefriends, that your narrator shares no such restraint. And if the unpleasant realities of bloodshed turn your insides to water, be advised now that the pages in your hands speak of a girl who was to murder as maestros are to music. Who did to happy ever afters what a sawblade does to skin. She's dead herself, now - words both the wicked and the just would give an eyeteeth smile to hear. A republic in ashes behind her. A city of bridges and bones laid at the botom of the sea by her hand. And yet I'm sure she'd still find a way to kill me if she knew I put these words to paper. Open me up and leave me for the hungry Dark. But I think someone should at least try to separate her from the lies told about her. Through her. By her. Someone who knew her true. A girl called Pale Daughter. Or Kingmaker. Or Crow. But most often, nothing at all. A killer of killers, whose tally of endings only the goddess and I truly know. And was she famous or infamous for it at the end? All this death? I confess I could never see the difference. But then, I've never seen things the way you have. Never truly lived in the world you call your own. Nor did she, really. I think that's why I loved her.