Babies who throw up...

For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don’t like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they’re babies.

-- Hilton Als
"How Richard Pryor Became America’s Comic Prophet of Race"
The New Yorker
Sept. 13, 1999

"You've got to pick a pocket or two, boys..."

Every age treats its penal system as natural, inevitable, and regrettable. When men were hanged in the public square, intellectuals explained that the practice was as helpful to the hanged as it was instructive for the audience. [...] Public hangings were simply part of street life. Pickpockets attended the hangings of other pickpockets in order to pick pockets.

- Adam Gopnik
"Should We Abolish Prisons?"

The New Yorker

July 22, 2024 

Apollo 13 (not the movie)

Both Lovell and Swigert thought that the bang—or shudder—had come from the lunar module, and as Haise emerged from the tunnel Swigert shot out of his seat and slammed the command-module hatch shut behind him. Haise scrambled to his seat—the right-hand one—for the master alarm was now sounding in his earphones. Swigert had noticed an amber caution light glowing overhead. It didn’t signal trouble in the oxygen tank, because that alarm system was still tied up by the low-pressure warning in the hydrogen tanks; rather, it signified trouble with the electrical system, the controls for which were near Haise. About this time, the Flight Surgeon, Dr. Willard R. Hawkins, noticed that the pulse readings for all three astronauts had shot up from about seventy to over a hundred and thirty.

--  Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.
"An Accident in Space"
The New Yorker, November 3, 1972

Me: It's the last sentence that begged me to post this.

Aristotle's cardinal virtues

Prudence, justice, temperance, and courage.

from the Nicomachean Ethics

About acting...

First of all, to have a career in this business is extremely hard. To have a long career is even harder. To have a long career where you’re getting good work is almost impossible.

-- Michael Imperioli
"Michael Imperioli Knows Art Can’t Save Us" (interview)
The New Yorker
March 24,2024

"Crazy" translated

I hate the implication that I was creating drama. It’s like when men use the word “crazy” to describe an ex. The translation is: “She expected emotional maturity from me.”

-- Anna Holmes
His Latex Goddess
The New Yorker
February 23, 2024

Oh sure, you're funny now...

[T]he champion golfer Lee Trevino remarked, “When I was a rookie, I told jokes, and no one laughed. After I began winning tournaments, I told the same jokes, and all of a sudden, people thought they were funny.”

--Evan Osnos

Rules for the Ruling Class

The New Yorker January 22, 2024