All the scientists hope to do is describe the universe mathematically, predict it, and maybe control it. The philosopher, by contr...ast, seems unbecomingly ambitious. He wants to understand the universe; to get behind phenomena and operation and solve the logically prior riddles of being, knowledge, and value. But the artist, and in particular the novelist, in his essence wishes neither to explain nor to control nor to understand the universe. He wants to make one of his own, and may even aspire to make it more orderly, meaningful, beautiful, and interesting than the one God turned out. What's more, in the opinion of many readers of literature, he sometimes succeeds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our Lamaze instructor . . . assured our class . . . that our cervix muscles would become "naturally numb" as they swelled and stre...tched, and deep breathing would turn the final explosions of pain into "manageable discomfort." This descriptions turned out to be as accurate as, say a steward advising passengers aboard the Titanic to prepare for a brisk but bracing swim.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... there was always the assumption, even when I was getting a graduate degree in education, that any work I did was temporary, so...mething to do until I assumed my principal role in life which was to be the perfect wife and mother, supported by my husband. As it turned out, I never had children, and I've supported myself for thirty years. If I'd known I was going to have to do that I would have made some very different decisions. I would have approached work with more seriousness and purpose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While I do not think it was so intended I have always been of the opinion that this turned out to be much the best for me. I had n...o national experience. What I have ever been able to do has been the result of first learning how to do it. I am not gifted with intuition. I need not only hard work but experience to be ready to solve problems. The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know a guy onct married a girl like that, carried on and bawled an' made out he'd knocked her up. He married her all right an' s...he turned out to be a goddam whore and he got the siph off'n her... You take it from me, boy...Love 'em and leave 'em, that's the only way for stiffs like us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am endued with such qualities that... if I were turned out of the Realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has... turned out to be an Annus Horribilis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today's pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early in...tellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase "early ripe, early rot!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or si...x men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »