"She was a lot to love, with a face as sweet as a birthday cake beneath spray-hardened bangs." —John Jeremiah Sullivan

"Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils." thenation.com

“There are two parts you can do, and they both wear bathrobes.”

vanityfair.com

"Sport builds characters, sure, but does it really build character?"

Years ago, I assessed Elmo as “a symbol of innocent joy peddled with the utmost cynicism”; now I regard him as a reliable accomplice for stealing 10 minutes for a shower. slate.com

"Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think—as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste." - A Canticle for Leibowitz

"Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think—as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste."

"Head down, with the poker face that was the 37-year-old’s default demeanor, he arranged long celery curls, ricotta and fried sunchokes into a three-dimensional wreath resembling the architecture of Antoni Gaudi." graphics.chicagotribune.com

"If something wants to be a story, it will be." - The End of Mr Y, by Scarlett Thomas. goodreads.com

"It must be strange to be locked in combat with the ghost of your former self." - Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building, by ESPN's Wright Thompson. quickish.com

"They had plentiful ammunition, lockers filled with great shells the size of coffins, but not the fuel, he told them, to return."—James Salter, "All That Is" (to be published in April).

It's a novel, but in this section Salter is recreating the amazing true story of the Yamato, an enormous Japanese battleship that was sent on a kamikaze mission in 1945 to defend Okinawa, with 3,000 men aboard. The ship was sunk, essentially ending the war at sea.
goodreads.com

Later that afternoon the Prime Minister visited the internationally famous Epsom Downs Racecourse, where he ran the track in a record 2 minutes, 3 seconds. -- Alex Balk theawl.com

"As a prominent nutritionist, Dr. Scrimshaw, who continued to ski and hike into his 90s, was often asked his views on issues ranging from snacking on chocolate to substituting two pieces of pie for lunch." nytimes.com

"He always needed money. One letter ended: 'P.S. Please send stamps.'"

"For all the talk about end-to-end financial suites like SAP, Oracle, and Peoplesoft, at the end of the day people do financial analysis by extracting data from those back-end systems and shoving it around in Excel spreadsheets."

"Somewhere in London, a pair of new Banksys await discovery."