“Looking around I finally conclude that Beast is the sort of restaurant invented solely to be photographed for in-flight magazines determined to present a portrait of your home city you do not recognise. I imagine there will soon be one in New York which will look just like this, with Dubai close behind and Moscow after that. They will all look the same. They will all cost the earth. They will all be completely and utterly absurd.”
—“Beast: restaurant review” by Jay Rayner

“Positano is never likely to attract the organdie-and-white linen tourist. It would be impossible to dress as a languid tourist-lady—crisp, cool white dress, sandals as white and light as little clouds, picture hat of arrogant nonsense, and one red rose held in a listless white-gloved pinky. I dare any dame to dress like this and climb the Positano stairs for a cocktail. She will arrive looking like a washcloth at a boys’ camp. There is no way for her to get anywhere except by climbing.”
—Harper’s Bazaar, May 1953

Run me out again
Run me out again

You know that I’m tired
You know that I’m ill
But it don’t matter ‘cause
You know that you will

Run me out again
Run me out again

Run
Run
Run

Run me out again
—Zola Jesus

“When nerds figured out how to play music over the Internet, it rendered indie culture inert.”
—“Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift,” by Dan Brooks

“A spear.”
—Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips

“She tried to look for the old self that might remain, but he was clean-shaven, and there was something so deeply mannered about him, a tweed jacket, a thin tie pushed up against his neck, a crease in his slacks. He looked as if he had dressed himself in the third person.”
—Colum McCann, “Sh’kohl”

“Mme is usually silent during la Question, but when we broach the topic of the source of Joan’s strength, she leans forward in her chair and says that faith is like a muscle. If we fail to cultivate it, it atrophies, so we must exercise. She looks quite ferocious as she says this, her accent suddenly not so much thicker—as it is impossible to associate the word thick with her—but sharper. She raises a clenched fist to make her dainty bicep pop, and her vehemence lifts her to her feet. I’ve never experienced atrophying faith, nor do I possess the ability to either cultivate or neglect it. For me faith arrives violently and then, having had me in its teeth for a spell, decamps, dropping me like limp and bloodied prey. Whether in the throes of its advent or departure, I try to keep all evidence of it hidden, as I would an unsightly, bandaged wound.”
—Kathryn Harrison, “Pilgrim’s Progress”

Zoetrope wins again.

“He wanted to show me something: There are three words printed on Pulama’s business cards: “Preservation. Progress. Sustainability.” His work — preservation — is one of those words. “It’s the first one,” he noted. He said it with conviction, as if he were lucky enough to live in some unspoiled world where the slogan on a corporation’s business cards reflected its genuine values. Maybe he still did. But maybe he didn’t anymore.”
–from “Larry Ellison Bought an Island in Hawaii. Now what?” by Jon Mooallem