Unexpected Award Quotes

(Golden Globe acceptance speech in the style of Jane Austen's letters): "Four A.M. Having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding, was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. Miss Lindsay Doran, of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly apppeared to understand me better than I undersand myself. Mr. James Schamus, a copiously erudite gentleman, and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behavior one has lernt to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Canton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a vast deal of money. Miss Lisa Henson -- a lovely girl, and Mr. Gareth Wigan -- a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activitiy until eleven P.M. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due therefore not to the dance, but to the waiting, in a long line for horseless vehicles of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport. P.S. Managed to avoid the hoyden Emily Tomkins who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious creature." "With gratitude and apologies to Miss Austen, thank you.

Everybody has got to live for something, but Jesus is arguing that, if he is not that thing, it will fail you. First, it will enslave you. Whatever that thing is, you will tell yourself that you have to have it or there is no tomorrow. That means that if anything threatens it, you will become inordinately scared; if anyone blocks it, you will become inordinately angry; and if you fail to achieve it, you will never be able to forgive yourself. But second, if you do achieve it, it will fail to deliver the fulfillment you expected. Let me give you an eloquent contemporary expression of what Jesus is saying. Nobody put this better than the American writer David Foster Wallace. He got to the top of his profession. He was an award-winning, bestselling postmodern novelist known around the world for his boundary-pushing storytelling. He once wrote a sentence that was more than a thousand words long. A few years before the end of his life, he gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College. He said to the graduating class, Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.4 Wallace was by no means a religious person, but he understood that everyone worships, everyone trusts in something for their salvation, everyone bases their lives on something that requires faith. A couple of years after giving that speech, Wallace killed himself. And this nonreligious man’s parting words to us are pretty terrifying: “Something will eat you alive.” Because even though you might never call it worship, you can be absolutely sure you are worshipping and you are seeking. And Jesus says, “Unless you’re worshipping me, unless I’m the center of your life, unless you’re trying to get your spiritual thirst quenched through me and not through these other things, unless you see that the solution must come inside rather than just pass by outside, then whatever you worship will abandon you in the end.

Grabbing Jeremy's lapels, Nick pulled him closer, grasping him not with fingers but with claws. His face inches away from Jeremy's, his eyes burning red, his fangs sharp and gleaming, he screamed, "BECAUSE YOU'RE MINE! NO ONE THREATENS WHAT'S MINE AND WALKS AWAY!" His growl rumbled through the room, ratcheting down into the subsonic. "I WILL BURN DOWN WHOLE ARMIES BEFORE I LET THEM TAKE YOU FROM ME!"... "Jesus, big brother," said Toby. "I know vampires are territorial when it comes to their mates, but you're way out in front for the possessive macho bullshit award." Nick sighed. "I know. I've got to work on that.

The lady in the boardroom was certainly an attractive woman, but since she worked for the Times Moist felt unable to award her total ladylike status. Ladies didn’t fiendishly quote exactly what you said but didn’t exactly mean, or hit you around the ear with unexpectedly difficult questions. Well, come to think of it, they did, quite often, but she got paid for it.

Juvenalius, 15 and gay, has been raised in a difficult family and has been held in his aunt's Diana suffocating iron grip for all of his life. He has been made to feel worthless and ashamed; with no freedom, only obedience. Yet this begins to change one day when he meets a boy named Davis at his high school who has drawn the meaningful letter 'C' on his right hand. Now Juvenalius has hope but his behavioral changes are seen as an act of defiance in his aunt's eyes until she catches Juvenalius and Davis kissing out back under the school's library windows. Then Juve's life is unexpectedly transformed.

Bell treated his friend and colleague Watson generously. Though he had no legal obligations to do so, he awarded Watson 10 percent of the company, allowing Watson to retire rich at the age of just twenty-seven. Able to do anything he wanted, Watson devoted the rest of his life to just that. He traveled the world, read widely, and took a degree in geology at MIT for the simple satisfaction of improving his brain. He then started a shipyard, which quickly grew to employ four thousand men, producing a scale of stress and obligation way beyond anything he wished for, so he sold the business, converted to Islam, and became a follower of Edward Bellamy, a radical philosopher and quasi communist who for a short period in the 1880s enjoyed phenomenal esteem and popularity. Tiring of Bellamy, Watson moved to England in early middle age and took up acting, for which he showed an unexpected talent. He proved particularly adept at Shakespearean roles and performed many times at Stratford-upon-Avon before returning to America and a life of quiet retirement. He died, contented and rich, at his winter home on Pass-Grille Key, Florida, just shy of his eighty-first birthday in 1934.

Where will you go if you don’t get into NYU?” he asks. “Where else?” I say. “Ole Miss, with Lucy and Morgan.” “Then Ole Miss is my backup too. Here’s the thing, Jem. I’m going wherever you’re going--whether it’s New York or Oxford. I’m not missing my chance this time.” “Why?” The word just tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop myself. “You’re going to be some kind of college superstar, whether it’s the SEC or the Ivy league. You’ll probably win a freaking Heisman.” “And you just might win an Oscar,” he counters. I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right. Please.” “Why not? God, Jemma, you don’t even see it. How strong and smart and tenacious you are. Everything you do, you do well. I’ve never seen you put your mind to something and not come out on top. You win that trophy at cheer camp every single summer--what’s it called, the superstar award? Only three people at the whole camp get it or something like that, right?” “How’d you know about that?” “Miss Shelby told my mom. I think they put it in the yearbook, too, don’t they?” “Maybe,” I say with a shrug. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a cheerleading trophy. “And how long did it take you to win your first shooting tournament after your dad bought you that gun? Six months, tops? From what I hear, you’re the best shot in all of Magnolia Branch.” “Okay, that’s true,” I say, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. He reaches for my hand. “And then there’s those dresses you make, like the one you wore to homecoming. You take something old and make it new--turn it into something special. My mom says you and Lucy could make a fortune selling ’em, and I bet she’s right. Don’t you see? You’re not just good at the stuff you do--you’re the best. That’s just the way you are. So I have no doubt that you’re going to be some award-winning filmmaker if you put your mind to it.” My heart swells unexpectedly. “You really think that?” He nods, his dark eyes shining. “I really do.” “Tell me again why we’ve hated each other all these years?” “Because we’re both stubborn as mules?” he offers. I can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I’d say that about covers it.

We are massively going against the grain of our culture by daring to give birth to ourselves anew as a way to recover from our childlessness. It is an act of colossal courage and given little regard, respect or credence by most others. There is very little support, hardly any recognition and no award ceremonies for remaking our lives around a new core of meaning.

William Brennan did not live to see his son, now a remarkable transformative actor, win his first Academy Award, for Come and Get It, the first time the award for supporting actor was given. Edward Arnold’s superb performance of a less than sympathetic character was not even recognized with a nomination. Walter said he was surprised at receiving the award and had not planned to attend the ceremony, but his studio insisted, giving him evening clothes when he said he did not have a dress suit. As a result, he remembered, “I stepped up to receive that unexpected Oscar in tux Number 34 from the Western Costume Company.

Initially, CERs did spur some forest projects in the tropics. But they also increased activity in an unexpected quarter. A small number of companies in China and India produced a chemical used in refrigerators. Their manufacturing process created a by-product called HFC-23. This chemical has an unusual property: it is a super greenhouse gas. Just one HFC-23 molecule causes as much global warming as 11,700 molecules of carbon dioxide. The manufacturers spotted an opportunity with CERs. Five years into the trading program, it emerged that these companies had doubled their output and had earned roughly half the world’s total CERs. The market for refrigerants had not grown, though, so why had they ramped up production? These companies had changed their business model. Their profit no longer came from producing and selling refrigerant. What they now cared about was producing and destroying the HFC-23 by-product. They duly incinerated every pound of HFC-23 they created. And for every pound of super greenhouse gas they destroyed, the companies were awarded CERs—which they then sold to polluting countries and companies in Europe and Japan. As Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, explained, “It’s perverse. You have companies which make a lot of money by making more of this gas, and then getting paid to destroy it.” Creating and then destroying HFC-23 generated a lot of profit—but it provided zero environmental benefit. Even worse, it was cheaper for companies to buy credits from HFC-23 destroyers than from forest builders. So very little money flowed to rainforests. By the time this scam was recognized and stopped, Chinese and Indian HFC-23 makers had earned a fortune. Billions of dollars had been wasted; the world’s climate got nothing in return.

...an incisive, smartly informative memoir that celebrates the power of the cohesive family unit—its outcome will offer positivity and hope to those facing similar challenges. —KIRKUS REVIEWS Deep Waters is a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined. After the trauma of her husband’s stroke, Mathews returns to a basic truth: through love, we discover who we are, and who we hope to become. —CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass Mathews has penned a deeply personal love story with the careful rigor of the scientist she is, free of any giddy prose or rainbows. Instead, Deep Waters comes at the reader with the gloves off and goes a full twelve rounds, documenting in granular detail the fears and conflicts attending a life-altering event that can drive even a strong relationship onto the ropes, and the endurance, commitment, and deep love that can save it. —LYNN SCHOOLER, critically acclaimed author of The Blue Bear and Walking Home With love as rugged and wild as the Alaskan landscape she made home, biologist Beth Ann Mathews tells the story of another wilderness: marriage after a life-altering stroke. Deep Waters is a thoughtful and provoking read, a reminder that life and love are inexplicably fragile and resilient, full of unexpected discovery. —ABBY MASLIN, author of Love You Hard Urgent, informative, emotionally satisfying, and thought-provoking, Deep Waters opens with a harrowing medical mystery and rewards the reader with a loving account of an adventurous partnership made stronger by crisis. —ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX, author of Annie and the Wolves We felt like we were there with Beth, sharing her emotions, anguish and struggles through the stroke, hospital stay, and recovery. We felt like part of the family as we read, gasped, cried and hoped for recovery and for peace in her heart.”—TBD BOOK CLUB, Seattle, WA If books were birds, this one would be an arctic tern—powerful and graceful, beset by storms and learning to survive, and more, to thrive. The writing is feather-light yet strong. —KIM HEACOX, author of Jimmy Bluefeather Mathews writes with poignant honesty about the challenges of marriage, family, and community in a moving story that highlights the strengths of human relationships. Deep Waters starts with a bang and just keeps going—lively, vivid, and personal. — ROMAN DIAL, author of The Adventurer’s Son: A Memoir

Given the demonstrated benefits of interactivity, why do so many of us continue to solve problems with our heads alone? Blame our entrenched cultural bias in favor of brainbound thinking, which holds that the only activity that matters is purely mental in kind. Manipulating real-world objects in order to solve an intellectual problem is regarded as childish or uncouth; real geniuses do it in their heads. This persistent oversight has occasionally been the cause of some irritated impatience among those who do recognize the value of externalization and interactivity. There’s a classic story, for example, concerning the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who was as well known for authoring popular books such as Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! as for winning the Nobel Prize (awarded to him and two colleagues in 1965). In a post-Nobel interview with the historian Charles Weiner, Weiner referred in passing to a batch of Feynman’s original notes and sketches, observing that the materials represented “a record of the day-to-day work” done by the physicist. Instead of simply assenting to Weiner’s remark, Feynman reacted with unexpected sharpness. “I actually did the work on the paper,” he said. “Well,” Weiner replied, “the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.” Feynman wasn’t having it. “No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. Okay?” Feynman wasn’t (just) being crotchety. He was defending a view of the act of creation that would be codified four decades later in Andy Clark’s theory of the extended mind. Writing about this very episode, Clark argues that, indeed, “Feynman was actually thinking on the paper. The loop through pen and paper is part of the physical machinery responsible for the shape of the flow of thoughts and ideas that we take, nonetheless, to be distinctively those of Richard Feynman.” We often ignore or dismiss these loops, preferring to focus on what goes on in the brain—but this incomplete perspective leads us to misunderstand our own minds. Writes Clark, “It is because we are so prone to think that the mental action is all, or nearly all, on the inside, that we have developed sciences and images of the mind that are, in a fundamental sense, inadequate.” We will “begin to see ourselves aright,” he suggests, only when we recognize the role of material things in our thinking—when we correct the errors and omissions of the brainbound perspective, and “put brain, body, and world together again.

During his senior cross-country season, Joash broke every course record except one. In his senior year, at the Nike National race in Portland, Oregon, Joash came in third against 199 of the fastest runners in the country. This boy, who once struggled at home and school, received a five-year full-ride running scholarship and was awarded Academic All American during his freshman year of college. Joash eventually hopes to become an U.S. citizen and work in the medical field. Calvin graduated from University of Mary in respiratory therapy and will graduate from medical school. His goal is to one day open a clinic in Kenya. These two brothers from Kenya brought much unexpected joy and adventure into our lives. They became our sons; they became brothers to our other children. Most of all, they expanded our hearts.

His Los Alamos work had won him prizes and awards that brought prestige and money. But it still rankled that editors of the top academic journals had deemed his work unfit for publication for two years after he began submitting it. The notion of a scientific breakthrough so original and unexpected that it cannot be published seems a slightly tarnished myth. Modern science, with its vast flow of information and its impartial system of peer review, is not supposed to be a matter of taste. One editor who sent back a Feigenbaum manuscript recognized years later that he had rejected a paper that was a turning point for the field; yet he still argued that the paper had been unsuited to his journal’s audience of applied mathematicians.

a touching and unexpected moment, actor Robert Downey Jr. defended, helped, and restored fellow actor and friend, Mel Gibson. Mel has had his share of issues that led most in the Hollywood industry to block him and refuse him any kind of meeting.  Robert not only decided to get Mel back on his feet, but he did so publicly on a televised award show. With humility, he sacrificially confessed his own struggle with controlled substances; with tenderness (out of genuine forgiveness and friendship) and with hope, he said:

It will be the article of the century, I promise,” Marshall said. “You might even win an award. ‘Train Murder Runs Off the Rails with Unexpected Outcome.’ There—I thought up a headline for you.