We watch in awe as from a hand moving lightly and swiftly across the drafting table there leaps into being something never seen before.
—Brendan Gill, Many Masks [a life of Frank Lloyd Wright]
And if it’s not a bluff? Well, there really isn’t any Plan B, because at this point you no longer have a problem bear. You have a bear problem.
—Lawrence W. Cheek
I love these stories because they show where we began, and therefore how far we have come, from the blame and delusions of our drinking days to the gentle illusions by which we stay sober. Now we understand that the blanket really does protect Linus and that Schroeder really does play lovely music on a toy piano, because both of them keep at it. They believe.
—Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
...Moments later, two court officers approached Madoff, who stood silently and still, and then he moved his arms a little so that his hands were behind his back. And then there was a click.
—Nancy Franklin [in a New Yorker article about the sentencing of Bernie Madoff]
[quoting a park ranger on a man’s six-month run of calamities after he followed a bird to a prehistoric ax head and stolen the ax.] “...He didn’t say it was a crow, did he? Because a crow—well, you just don’t follow crows.”
—Douglas J. Kreutz, “The Year of the Ax”
Tyler looked stricken. Lori shifted nervously in her seat. Bandit growled. Cesar turned to the dog and said, “Sh-h-h.” And everyone was still.
—Malcolm Gladwell [in a New Yorker profile of Cesar Millan, the famous “dog whisperer”
And so it goes for all of us: for me, Ron, the poet plumber and the professor, who place ourselves within the confines of a personal ad hoping someone out there will connect with our 50 words and nervous voices on a recorded message. If we were really honest, our ads would read: “My heart has been shattered and I’m scared. Will someone take a chance on me?”
-—from “Like New (With a Few Broken Parts) by Irene Sherlock
The water is blue satin, the breeze as slack as a snoozing cat. Paddling at a casual three knots, we overtake a small sloop, its owner lounging on the deck. “Great day for paddling, maybe not so great for sailing,” I call out.
“No, it’s a great day for sailing,” he replies.
“You’re not going to go anywhere fast.”
“Why would I want to go anywhere fast?”
—Lawrence W. Cheek [in a Sunset travel story on the San Juan Islands]
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