In many respects this is a story about carelessness and about how even the best of intentions can go perilously awry.
"I cannot tell you the selfish pleasure I get out of working with President Clinton," Mr. Bush said.
A survey of 1,500 British retirees found that 45 percent said they stayed at one job too long.
"To avoid similar grief, write out your current regrets and what you wish you had done instead."
"People said, ‘This goose has no owner.’ "
"Now we all just have to figure out what to do next."
American officials hope that Afghanistan’s drug problem will someday be only as bad as that of Colombia.
"There’s no sugar-coating this ... at the end of the day, it’s a high risk venture."
"What I would like is for people to look back in 10 years and say, ‘Yeah, these guys got it right.’ "
"One of the most rewarding things is when people say, ‘I really don’t like the outcome, but the process was fair.’ "
"It sounded nutty at first," Mr. Monroe recalled, "but the more and more you get into it, the more sense it makes."
... the ideas espoused by Mr. Falwell and Mr. Wolfowitz, though both were valued on the right, did not mesh; they were unconnected, spokes in the large conservative wheel ...
"Red flags should have been waving."
We have different words for art and idea because they are two different things.
Economists use the term "survivorship bias" to describe the recollection of past moments by what has survived into the present, filtering out whatever elements did not bear fruit.
"We’ve reached a tipping point. It’s not just talk anymore."
"The intent was to terrorize a nation to the maximum extent, and there is nothing like nuking civilians to achieve that effect."
We want people to say: ‘Wow, check that out. I’d like to have that.’ And that will take some time.
"This is going to take 20 or 30 years," he said.
"The thing is to get out before they throw you out."
"There is more work to be done, the Pakistanis know that, and we are engaged with the Musharraf government to ramp up the fight."
It is, then, for the public good. But it might also be for the public good were Congress to allow the enslavement of foreign captives and their descendants (this was tried); the seizure of Bill Gates’s bankbook; or the ruthless suppression of Alec Baldwin.
It will be difficult, but we’ll find our way around the problem.
Gunmen wearing Iraqi Army uniforms dragged 15 Shiite Kurds into the street in an eastern Iraqi village and shot them dead on Saturday. Residents had posted guards at the entrances to the town ...but the guards waved the gunmen through their checkpoints, thinking they were authentic soldiers. The gunmen grabbed the guards, dragged several other men from their homes and killed them all.
"We don’t do drugs, we’re just killing terrorists."
"Nobody can really explain what we are getting for this money or even where it’s going."
"You can always show progress," he said. "Somewhere in Iraq, something is better than it was three months ago, and you can go and get somebody to write that story."
Given current American posturing on the world stage, I would hate to think that Fowler's assessment of Pyle was still relevant: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."
The thesis is quite simply that America is a crassly materialistic and "innocent" nation with no understanding of other peoples. When her representatives intervene in other countries' affairs it causes only suffering. America should leave Asians to work out their own destinies, even when this means the victory of communism.
At one point in the story Phuong asks Fowler, "Are there skyscrapers in London?" and Fowler, who knows she is thinking of Pyle, says gently that no, the skyscrapers are in New York. Reading that passage today, when London is studded with skyscrapers, I realize just what an age has passed since Greene was in Saigon writing this novel. Since then, the French have left and after them the Americans, and now even the northern Communists have stopped trying to impose their will on what is to them too an alien city.
If you want to be more creative, have more fun.
I didn’t want to turn 60 and be about woulda, coulda, shoulda.
You, too, can drastically reduce the odds of pole failure!
"Buck up and realize this is part of survival in an office."
Bad isn’t what it used to be.
He used to eviscerate my stuff when I was in high school.
You can’t just be asked to do a werewolf movie and then expect it to be good.
"I just don’t want someone mixing vitamins in with my vice," she said.
We can’t continue to live like drunken sailors. Eventually we must start saving some of the money. But I don’t see us doing this.
Although they won’t say it, they are very, very concerned about the lack of growth of digital music.
Not everyone thinks selling unprotected music can offset the decline in CD sales and save the music business.
"Events of this nature make a lot of people sit up. Today Estonia, tomorrow it could be somebody else."
[These are interesting events, especially in light of Russia's stated policy regarding nuclear response to computer network attack.]
In addition to increasing alertness, caffeine increases the ability to be influenced.
It’s the suffering that makes reading transcendent.
The shift speaks volumes about how digital technologies and social networking sites are altering the character of independent music scenes across the world.
It is "a step back to the dark ages in the music world!" fumed Mario from Mexico City.
... the pulse of an emotional thriller, but without commercial cinema’s usual shrieking violins and storytelling beats ...
"I woke up one day at age 63 and I didn’t know anything about the most fundamental questions of life."
"We are throwing away a whole generation."
As the movie business goes through a generational shift, many ex-titans of the media are being forced to take stock, searching for meaning beyond getting a favored booth at the Grill.
One downside to managing the gaming generation is that it associates "bosses" with level bosses, the obstacle in their way to the next level in a game.
Most customer relationship management software is the business equivalent of calorie counting.
Microsoft has asked regulators to scrutinize the Google-DoubleClick deal, which it said would reduce competition. But Microsoft’s general counsel said that Microsoft and aQuantive were complementary businesses and that their union would promote competition.
From 1990 to 2006, Hispanics’ disposable income rose by 832 percent, to $798 billion, compared with 154 percent for the rest of the population.
"It’s like you’ve been transported to Mexico," said Julio Peñaranda, the general manager of the Plaza Fiesta Mall in Atlanta.
Perhaps the most telling glimpse into how absurd the political dialogue has become came when Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, asked Mr. Stern of the Service Employees: "Does the janitor who cleans your office make the same income as you do?"
"No, sir," Mr. Stern responded, looking bemused by the question.
"So," Mr. Hensarling said, "one can say that you are practicing income inequality."
Chelsea Clinton works at Avenue Capital, a hedge fund.
Barney Frank: a bit like watching someone waving an unloaded gun ... threatening, but ultimately harmless.
"If you go the consensus path, you get the average result rather than what is truly path-breaking."
The period traumatized an entire generation of engineers and left a long-lasting wound in the industry, leading to a brain drain of experienced engineers ...
"It’s greed, greed and more greed -- I mean, what’s more important to us, the environment or some stupid golf?"
More women should be in charge, Mr. Clinton added, “so George and I can spend more time playing golf.”
"It wasn’t about technology back then, or Prada handbags and high heels, and that’s what was so great about this area."
"Ahhh," he croons, inhaling the morning air. "The smell of the earth! Nice, like the scent of a woman!"
His reverie is short-lived. Farther along, he encounters roadside debris, including a bright blue Pepsi can. "Modern man," he says, wincing, "is the cancer of the earth. We are only here to destroy."
There is a real sense among parents that it’s almost embarrassing if your child has to settle for a lower-level school.
"What is most discouraging is that as students grow older and progress through the grades towards adulthood and eligibility to vote, their civic knowledge and dispositions seems to grow weaker."
"This is a different architecture."
"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," said Mr. Carter, 82, a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The book is "a machine," said Marnie Cochran, the executive editor of Da Capo. "It’s a real institution."
"The only people who need unions are those who do not work hard."
"Most people have no idea how widespread and sophisticated telemarketing fraud has become," said James Davis, a Federal Trade Commission lawyer. "It shocks even us."
"They are angry, and I cannot blame them," she said. "The country has nothing to offer them, and their education is worthless. It doesn’t prepare them for anything."
It’s not good to be the czar, not here, not now. You know it has gotten messy, the problem so immense ... and the managers so desperate ... that the only solution lies with something as fundamentally undemocratic as the appointment of a czar.
"We kind of ride on the fact that all these things get a lot of press, and get people interested in the product." [The product? "liquefied WORM POOP."]
Researchers are beginning to study the flow of work and ideas through the social networks inside companies ... minute by minute, bit by bit.
Unfortunately, an appreciation of the written word and its power does not always correlate with talent.
I asked Tipper how long it had taken her husband to get over the agony of 2000. She looked at her watch and laughed. "What time is it now?" she asked.
An ace in the hole, called Home, a three-dimensional virtual world ... Home functions as a meeting space and customizable virtual identity, sort of like Second Life meets MySpace.
