Writing Inspiration | 16 | Apr 20 — Apr 26
Excerpts
In Waldman’s novel, a female friend of the protagonist makes a persuasive argument: “Dating is probably the most fraught human interaction there is. . . . It’s meritocracy applied to personal life, but there’s no accountability. We submit ourselves to these intimate inspections and simultaneously inflict them on others and try to keep our psyches intact. . . . But who cares, right? It’s just girl stuff.”
from Written Off by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
It can’t come as a shock, at this point, that anyone in the Trump Administration thought it was a good idea to send a neophyte to a war zone, or to bypass normal diplomatic procedures, or to turn a fight in which American troops are at risk and Iraqi civilians are being killed by errant air strikes into a venue for familial posturing.
from Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World by Amy Davidson, The New Yorker
By 2005, one out of every ten Americans had a prescription for an antidepressant. IMS Health, a company that gathers data on health care, reports that in the United States in 2008 a hundred and sixty-four million prescriptions were written for antidepressants, and sales totalled $9.6 billion. As a depressed person might ask, What does it all mean?
from Head Case by Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Words
- visceral: relating to deep, inward feelings rather than intellect
You’re not a baby boomer if you don’t have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate. — P. J. O’Rourke
There’s something very visceral about watching people beg for money. It’s powerful. — Kevin O’Leary
- pedant: a person who’s excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic knowledge (same root as “pedagogue”)
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination. — Alfred North Whitehead
- albatross: a source of frustration or guilt; an encumbrance (and, of course, it’s also a bird)
Once you decide that it is the art that is important and not how popular and well received you are, you no longer have an albatross. — Stephen Stills
Most of what I read comes from The New Yorker or The Atlantic — help me branch out! If you run across an amazing piece of writing, word, or excerpt, let me know about it here. ❤️
