“By now he was convinced that minutes were passing like seconds without his knowing it. From a great distance he could discern his ridiculousness. He could picture himself spending the rest of the night leaving footprints while cleaning his hands after filling footprints he’d left while cleaning his hands, but he also sensed the danger of picturing this. If he let his resolution be taken over by silliness, he was liable to put down the shovel and go back to the city and laugh at the idea of himself as a killer. Be the former Andreas, not the man he wanted to be now. He saw it clearly in those terms. He had to kill the man he’d always been, by killing someone else.”
—Jonathan Franzen

“Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” [Obama] said.

…

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability,” [King] cautioned, “but comes through continuous struggle.”
—June 19, 2015

“Moral cowardice requires choice and action. It demands that
its adherents repeatedly look away, that they favor the fanciful over
the plain, myth over history, the dream over the real. Here is another
choice.

“Take down the flag. Take it down now.

“Put it in a museum. Inscribe beneath it the years 1861–2015.
Move forward. Abandon this charlatanism. Drive out this cult of death
and chains. Save your lovely souls. Move forward. Do it now.”
—Ta-Nehisi Coates

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea says it has succeeded where the greatest minds in science have failed.

The authoritarian, impoverished nation better known for pursuing a nuclear program despite global criticism announced Friday it has a drug can prevent and cure MERS, Ebola, SARS and AIDS.

The secretive state did not provide proof, and the claim is likely to provoke widespread skepticism.

The official Korean Central News Agency said scientists developed Kumdang-2 from ginseng grown from fertilizer mixed with rare-earth elements. According to the pro-North Korea website Minjok Tongshin, the drug was originally produced in 1996.

“Malicious virus infections like SARS, Ebola and MERS are diseases that are related to immune systems, so they can be easily treated by Kumdang-2 injection drug, which is a strong immune reviver,” KCNA said.

North Korea shut out foreign tourists for half a year with some of the world’s strictest Ebola controls, even though no cases of the disease were reported anywhere near the country, before lifting the restrictions earlier this year.

It is believed to be struggling to combat diseases such as tuberculosis, and respiratory infections are among its most common causes of death, according to the World Health Organization.

North Korea trumpeted the same drug during deadly bird flu outbreaks in 2006 and 2013.

The North’s claim comes as rival South Korea fights an outbreak of MERS that has killed two dozen people and sickened more than 160 since last month. There is no vaccine for the disease.

“After a week, my eyeballs stopped sweating. After the first two months, my feelings tsunami subsided. Honestly, what had I been waiting for? Quitting smoking was simple. The secret, you see, is hidden in the phrase itself. You stop putting cigarettes in your mouth.

“It’s like KonMari, except easy, because the only things you throw out are your cigarettes and your entire sense of self…. Quitting smoking is the khakis of existence. Quitting smoking is the Chipotle on St. Marks Place. I am totally not cool. I may as well be someone’s stupid Brooklyn dad. My hair is its natural color. Most days I’m just wearing whatever. I do yoga endlessly. What am I now?”
—Farewell, My Lovely Cigarettes

Plimpton: Finally, a fundamental question: as a creative writer what do you think is the function of your art? Why a representation of fact, rather than fact itself?

Hemingway: Why be puzzled by that? From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?
—The Art of Fiction No. 21, Paris Review

“’Superstition is not going to help you,’ Adriano Moraes says. When he started riding bulls professionally in the United States in 1993, he found American cowboys to be oddly obsessed with bad luck — they didn’t put their hats on beds, accept $50 bills or eat chicken before getting on a bull. Instead, Moraes says, develop your core strength. He did 2,000 crunches a day during the 15 years he competed with the Professional Bull Riders, the international organization known as the P.B.R., eventually becoming its first three-time world champion. Bulls can weigh up to 2,200 pounds and are bred for their explosive leaps and midair spins. “Dance with the bull,” advises Moraes, 45, who retired in 2008 and now scouts talent (bovine and human) and runs events for the P.B.R. in his native Brazil. ‘Never try to fight; if you fight, you always lose.’ Stay up near the animal’s shoulders, away from its high-kicking hindquarters.”
—”Tip: How to Ride a Bull” by Malia Wollan