Category: people

“She could certainly afford to buy a newspaper; owning one is pretty unlikely to bankrupt her. And it would give her a far greater chance of changing the mood music of British politics than the occasional article ever could.”

“[She] was a central figure in the real-life circle of friends whose travels across the country in search of kicks and revelation were immortalized in On the Road. She was the inspiration for the character Camille, the second wife of Dean Moriarty, the ‘wild yea-saying overburst of American joy’ who makes the novel go go go.”

“[Her] comedic flair tickled audiences for nearly six decades as she made her way from California nightclubs to the Broadway stage and beyond. … There were nearly as many Off Broadway shows … as well as national tours, regional productions and a great deal of television.”

Morgan Meis: “Whenever I see Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle-blower, I think of a young George Orwell standing in the field in Burma. … Like Orwell in the elephant story, Snowden comes off as someone trapped in a bad situation. He has unpleasant facts to show us. He knows what happens to messengers bearing bad news.”

“It cannot be disputed that the economic impact to Canada of my entrepreneurial and creative activities was in the billions of dollars and the cultural impact was unparalleled in the history of this country,” he wrote.

“A jailed member of Russia’s Pussy Riot punk band said she was starting a hunger strike on Monday to protest against ‘slave labor’ in her penal colony and said she had received a death threat from a senior prison official.”

“I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions. I demand that the colony administration respect human rights; I demand that the Mordovia camp function in accordance with the law. I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves.”

“I don’t want to be a sad sack who made a mistake. I gotta have a home, a base, a place where all my shoes are. I’m settled. When I first moved in here, I had good friends around me, but I kept thinking, ‘I can’t imagine being here alone.’ But then I was alone, and everything was fine.”

“King notes with some amusement that he has been around so long that kids who read and loved him in the 1970s now run publishing houses and newspapers; he is revered, these days, as a grand old man of American letters.”

“Still, there’s no getting away from the fascination with Eliot’s romantic life and her looks, both of which presented a challenge to acceptable norms.”