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It's a great historical joke that when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was a blind date made in serve-you-right heaven. At the time, they were the two most unpleasant cultures in the entire world, and richly deserved each other. Still, the story of how stout Cortes blustered, bullied and bludgeoned his way to collapsing an entire empire with a handful of contagious hoodlums is astonishing.
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The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.
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Pearl Harbor is strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes at the cost of accuracy.
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Every living creature is the son of the supreme Lord, and He does not tolerate even ants being killed
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If some hole does not possess striking individuality through some gift of nature, it must be given as much as possible artificially, and the artifice must be introduced in so subtle a manner as to make it seem natural.
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Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?
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I gravitate toward the larger worldview questions such as, Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What does it mean to know another person? To love someone? Of course, those questions are sort of in the background as I'm playing with language in the foreground, but those are the informing questions.
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It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.
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The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.
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War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.
