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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 8afaee6 | Outside, the sirens go whirling off in another direction, leaving only the sky stretched over the houses, the lonely beautiful universe, a sad song played on a broken instrument. She wonders if Skippy did hear them tonight. Ruprecht told her that even though you can't see strings, scientists believed the theory was true because it was the most beautiful explanation. So, Skippy heard their song, that would be the beautiful explanation, would.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 3c8573d | By hoarding images, we seek to conquer time. Of course, we do not mistake a photograph in a frame or on a screen for the reality as it was. Nevertheless, as Barthes has written, the photograph makes an assertion, and it makes it in a particular mode - what the Greeks called the Aorist, a form of the past tense that is never actually completed but seems to go on indefinitely. Thus, the picture presents us with the past as a continuum which f.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 412474d | Mrs. P.? Oh no. She's the help. Bosnian, you know. Or is it Serbian? An absolute treasure, anyway. As I always say to Bel, if there's one good thing to come out of all this fuss in the Balkans, it's the availability of quality staff . . ." The words died away on my lips: once again I found myself trailing off in the stare of those unblinking eyes. This fellow was like some kind of after-dinner black hole. My anxiety began to mount again." .. | current-events ignorant self-absorbed small-talk wealth | Paul Murray | |
| 72c1250 | When he gets up he spends an hour kicking and stamping on his French horn so he will not have to play it again. Music, maths, these are things that no longer make any sense to him. They are too perfect, they do not belong here. He does not khow how he ever believed this universe could be a symphony played on super-strings, when it sounds like shit, played on shit. | Paul Murray | ||
| 64c9dd3 | According to string theory, which Professor Tamashi and other scientists have been using to try to solve the Big Bang, in addition to the four dimensions of spacetime we know, there are six of these very small, curled-up dimensions, making ten all told. And the strings, which are little strands of energy, wiggle around vibrating in these ten dimensions.' 'Like Dennis's mother,' Mario, seeking vengeance for the ant slur, interjects, 'wigglin.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 176592e | The first time Halley set eyes on Howard was at a showing of The Towering Inferno. When she heard about him, her sister had wondered aloud how much of a future you could have with someone you'd met at a disaster movie. But at that point Halley wasn't feeling picky. She had been in Dublin just over three weeks - not so long that she didn't still get lost all the time on the infuriating streets that kept changing their names, but enough to di.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 528a77c | Dennis and Mario, meanwhile, have fallen behind to debate the merits and demerits of Mario's new phone. 'The thing you don't understand about this phone is that it's state of the art, which means, this is the best phone you can get.' 'I do understand that, you moron, I'm saying what's the point of having a state-of-the-art phone when everyone who's going to call you on it is living six feet away from you?' 'I think what it is, is, you are j.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 1ea9278 | Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious than singed trousers; the word backdraught clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator's mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely artificial, 'just part o.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 278db61 | I'll saw my hands off before I appear on stage with you and your Orchestra of Gays!' Dennis bellows. 'Do you hear me? I'll saw my hands off! | Paul Murray | ||
| 841cc3a | Goodbye, Earth! So long, you piece of crap, except for Italy. | Paul Murray | ||
| 920227e | I don't know what just happened here. But all those things I said before, about how you were a big fat fake and a liar, and your portal was a piece of crap that couldn't heat a bowl of soup, and you were gay and all scientists were gay?' 'Yes.' 'Well... I was wrong. I'm sorry. | Paul Murray | ||
| 9fcdbdc | Okay, so one night a couple of weeks ago - it would have been about the same time as the Hop, I suppose - Niall's sister and her friend are down in their room, rehearsing. They get quite caught up in what they're doing and they end up staying down longer than they planned.' 'This friend, is she hot?' Mario puts in. 'I have seen Niall's sister, thanks but no thanks - however, how about the friend?' 'I haven't met her,' Dennis says. 'It doesn.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 46dcb35 | She never came back after mid-term break; according to the Automator, 'unforeseen circumstances' had forced her to extend her holiday. Every day Howard sees her classes trooping despondently from the Geography Room to the study hall, or carrying votive bundles of cardboard and paper to the recycling bins, their faces anxious, hopeful, like Indians doing a rain dance. He knows how they feel. Since mid-term he's existed in a constant state of.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 05b486a | They pause, almost but not quite clutching each other, with their ears cocked. The hideous dried-out croak is drawing inevitably closer - apparently, whether by some quirk of the architecture, the type of stone in the masonry perhaps or the curious way the corridor bends, from both directions at once. The boys gibber at each other helplessly. With every passing instant now the temperature drops precipitously, the grey light wanes; the ghast.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 72fee6e | Ruprecht can build another pod though, right? I mean it was mostly just tinfoil.' 'The problem is that he has no blueprint. From the original design he keeps making changes, but these he does not write down. So it is impossible to replicate exactly.' Later that day, Ruprecht approaches Skippy. His expression is feverish. 'I've devised a foolproof plan to get my pod back from St Brigid's,' he says. 'I call it, "Operation Falcon".' Skippy loo.. | Paul Murray | ||
| c8f8ec4 | Just ahead of the Van Doren Quartet in the line is Trevor Hickey, aka 'The Duke', who with no visible means of making music is staring into space, mumbling a speech to himself: '... since the dawn of time... our oldest and most indefatigable foe...' Geoff keeps catching snatches of this, and curiosity eventually reels him in. 'Uh, Trevor, where's your instrument?' 'Shock and amaze - oh, I'm not giving a musical performance.' 'Not musical..... | Paul Murray | ||
| add0242 | The Principal of Seabrook College came in to speak to her too, a couple of days after it happened. He was a tall, dynamic man, in his late thirties maybe? Basically he was doing the same thing she was, trying to protect the school's image and explain that while it was a tragedy it was just this one crazy kid, and not anyone else's fault. Having said that - he put his hand on her arm - on behalf of the school I want to apologize for any dist.. | Paul Murray | ||
| f54a0ea | Skippy's dead, Blowjob! He's dead, and you can't bring him back! Not you, not every bent scientist in every laboratory in the world!' Breathing heavily, Dennis pauses, then turns his dreadful gaze on the others. 'You bummers need to get it through your heads that this is real. None of the stupid bullshit we do to distract ourselves is going to help any more. Spiderman isn't going to help. Eminem isn't going to help. Some fucking gay lame ti.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 2de5186 | It's a confidentiality clause. No doubt you'll be familiar with these from your days in the City. In signing, you consent by law not to disclose sensitive information pertaining to school affairs, including what we have discussed here today.' Howard gapes back at him stupidly. 'Are you serious?' 'Merely a precaution, Howard, making sure we've got all our angles covered. No need to rush into it right away. Take it home with you, think it ove.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 3494c4b | A dainty man of a nervous disposition, Father Laughton detests discord above all things. He always climbs down before seriously disagreeing with anyone; he can't dismiss the most disruptive student from his class without feeling sorry twenty seconds later and racing down the corridor to summon him back. As a result, his music appreciation courses are notoriously anarchic - in fact they make anarchy look like a slow day at the library - and .. | Paul Murray | ||
| be1d816 | Cutting through Temple Bar toward the river, they pass the cinema outside which Howard met Halley for the first time: this nugget of history he does not pass on to the boys. He remembers walking with her down to the riverside, but it's only as they are crossing Ha'penny Bridge - the elderly construction seeming to sway beneath their impatient feet, the quays of the city stretching away on either side - that he remembers the museum was where.. | Paul Murray | ||
| 78c6851 | The fact is that, after the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, the Irishmen who'd fought in the Great War didn't fit the new way the country imagined itself. If the British were our sworn enemies, why had two hundred thousand Irishmen gone off to fight alongside them? If our history was the struggle to escape from British oppression, what were we doing helping Britain out, fighting and dying on her behalf? The existence of these sol.. | Paul Murray | ||
| aed49cc | These daydreams persisted like an alternate life | Paul Murray | ||
| c6d0d94 | Remington, for God's sake, stop burping.' 'It's my burp-day. | Paul Murray | ||
| 5fc3621 | She hadn't written so much as a word of a story, but for the first time in a long time she felt she was inside a story of her own, and surely that was better yet. | Paul Murray | ||
| 40d94e4 | The humble man feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are preferred and blessed before him. He can bear to hear others praised and himself forgotten, because in God's presence he has learned to say with Paul 'I be nothing' (2 Corinthians 12:11). He has received the spirit of Jesus, who did not please Himself and did not seek His own honor, as the spirit of his life. | humility | Andrew Murray | |
| 7ff6154 | For Guido the past, like a Third World country, was merely another resource to be exploited and abandoned when the time comes; and that is why civilization is built by men like him and the Automator, and not men like Howard, who have never quite worked out which stories are disposable, and which, if any, you're actually supposed to believe. | Paul Murray | ||
| 75a9d6c | 'Cute how?' Zephyr asked her. 'Irish-looking,' Halley said, by which she meant a collection of indistinct features - pale skin, mousy hair, general air of ill-health - that combine to mysteriously powerful romantic effect.) | Paul Murray | ||
| 5b8f552 | Above the lot, the great pink hoop of the Ed's Doughnut House sign broadcasts its frigid synthetic light into the night, | Paul Murray | ||
| b836114 | The word `Father' is a small word but, by pronouncing it in prayer, and in particular by repeating the phrase `Our Father', we are achieving `five things', Thomas tells us in his Lectures on St Matthew. First of all, the words `instruct us in our faith'; second, they `raise our hopes'; third, `they serve to stimulate charity'; fourth, they invite us `to imitate God'; and fifth, they call us `to humility'. | Paul Murray | ||
| a2c34f3 | Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. | Paul Murray | ||
| f806f0e | DreamWorks SKG. ALAN KAY. Creative and colorful computer pioneer who envisioned early personal computers, helped arrange Jobs's Xerox PARC visit and his purchase of Pixar. DANIEL KOTTKE. Jobs's closest friend at Reed, fellow pilgrim to India, early Apple employee. JOHN LASSETER. Cofounder and creative force at Pixar. DAN'L LEWIN. Marketing exec with Jobs at Apple and then NeXT. MIKE MARKKULA. First big Apple investor and chairman, a father .. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 7145982 | That started an exchange about the early history | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 411e9e5 | book. When my Einstein biography came out, he came to a book event in Palo Alto and | Walter Isaacson | ||
| d9db738 | the British computer pioneer who broke the German wartime codes and then committed suicide by biting into a cyanide- | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 12761a1 | Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $ 1 a year in pay and no stock options. "I make 50 cents for showing up,"he liked to joke, "and the other 50 cents is based on performance."Since his return in July 1997, Apple stock had gone from just under $ 14 to just over $.. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| c907949 | Almost nobody knew, she said. He had called me right before he was going to be operated on for cancer, and he was still keeping it a secret, she explained. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 11dffe8 | On a trip to London with Jobs, Ive had the thankless task of choosing the hotel. He picked the Hempel, a tranquil five- star boutique hotel with a sophisticated minimalism that he thought Jobs would love. But as soon as they checked in, he braced himself, and sure enough his phone rang a minute later. "I hate my room,"Jobs declared. "It's a piece of shit, let's go."So Ive gathered his luggage and went to the front desk, where Jobs bluntly t.. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 8f9ffb8 | So Germany in the 1920s was not a good place or time to be an internationalist, pacifist, intellectual Jew. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 81418d9 | The cult of individual personalities is always, in my view, unjustified . . . It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. | cognitive-bias einstein human-civilisation humanity | Walter Isaacson | |
| e2a443d | Leonardo's initial anatomy studies of 1489 focused on human skulls. He started with a skull that had been sawed in half, top to bottom (fig. 60). Then the front of the left half was sawed off. His groundbreaking technique of drawing the two halves together made it easy to see how the inner cavities were positioned relative to the face. For example, the frontal sinus, which Leonardo is the first person to correctly depict, is shown to rest j.. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| e276d8e | In a letter to Pixar shareholders, Jobs explained that winning the right to have equal branding with Disney on all the movies, as well as advertising and toys, was the most important aspect of the deal. "We want Pixar to grow into a brand that embodies the same level of trust as the Disney brand,"he wrote. "But in order for Pixar to earn this trust, consumers must know that Pixar is creating the films."Jobs was known during his career for c.. | Walter Isaacson | ||
| 035294d | species | Walter Isaacson | ||
| e5b1641 | No battle can be won in the study, and theory without practice is dead. | Alexander Suvorov |