Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Alphabet would be a holding company to house its wackier or noncore efforts - like its Verily life sciences, Waymo self-driving cars, and Loon Internet balloon projects - while Google's advertising-oriented business would stand apart and continue to drive the company's finances.
My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.
In the seventeenth century, it was held by some that inside a human sperm there was a minute human being - a homunculus - that was planted inside the womb. Development consisted of the miniature homunculus enlarging and passing through birth and on to maturity-just like inflating a balloon.
I tell myself, 'You're great, you're powerful, you're strong. You're the greatest, most powerful, strongest fighter in the world.' I acknowledge my greatness. I bow down before my greatness. I inflate myself like that, and then I pop the balloon in a single sentence by saying: You can be beaten.
Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon.
Just as a balloon filled gradually with air bursts when the limit of its tensile strength is passed, there are thresholds of radical, disruptive change in politics. When those thresholds are crossed, the impossible suddenly becomes probable, with revolutionary implications for governments and nations.
I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.
I've accepted that we've all got crap to deal with and problems that we're fighting not to be defined by. At the end of the day, we all want the same stuff: fulfillment, love, support, comfort, and a hot-air balloon with laser guns attached to it. The most important thing is that we appreciate the crazy ride we're on.
I'm focused on leaks that hurt the institution of the president and the president himself. I understand we have to leak things to reporters to help shape policy or try to balloon things or do tests on ideas or people for different jobs. I'm talking about nefarious, unnecessary, backstabbing, palace intrigue-like leaks.
When I was a kid, there was nothing better than water balloon fights. I grew up in Brooklyn: we had the fire hydrants, and we would open up a soda can at both ends and squirt people walking by. I love the kinds of things that encourage you to let your guard down, be open and vulnerable, and just to be laughing sincerely.
I'm not the sort of person who gives up on things. The first time we crossed the Atlantic in the balloon, it crashed, and we went on and did the Pacific. First time we crossed the Atlantic in a boat, it sank, and we went on and got the record. So, generally speaking, we will pick ourselves up, brush ourselves down, and carry on.
All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy.
