michelleweber

“Even if I had stopped it (economy), if I had closed the city for 30 days, no one goes in and no one goes out. At some point I would have had to open and at some point the virus would have gotten here.”

“Even as Iranians speculate about who will succeed Khamenei, many believe that, whoever becomes Supreme Leader, the revolution is no longer salvageable.”

“That violent heteronormative cultures of sex and reproduction among humans are attributed to ‘nature’ feels astonishing after spending time on the allotment. The slutty ingenuity of vegetables when it comes to desire and reproductive methods is a marvel that makes a mockery of conservative ideas of the natural.”

“I told my wife, Cindy, ‘If this proves to be first-century, I may be involved in researching one of the most important pieces of the Bible ever discovered.’ ” It wasn’t, and he didn’t.

“When I stepped through the door, I told him, I found myself in a room entirely lined with aquariums, in which large, spotted, neon-colored fish were floating. It felt peaceful, I told Brown. ‘There’s some purpose here. I’m not worried about the fish, they’re being taken care of.’”

“MY NAME IS DREW AND I LOVE PANCAKES.”

“The first five minutes—especially when it’s below 60—can be so painful and you think, I don’t want to do this. But when you’re swimming in training, within ten minutes, your body goes numb and there’s this adrenaline and a thrill. I don’t understand it, but it’s incredible.”

“For several years, it seemed like she was following the playbook of other celebrity entrepreneurs. But now she has clearly decided to throw that strategy out the window. Apparently, it no longer sparked joy. Perhaps it never did.”

“And yet, for academics this is a constant tension. They have this idea that the writing should be secondary, or distinct, from the thinking. And I’ve always found that very bizarre. How are you thinking, if you are not writing?”

” It was supposed to be a routine six-hour tour, including the highlight: a quick hike into the island’s otherworldly caldera. Then the volcano exploded. What happened next reveals troubling questions about the risks we’re willing to take when lives hang in the balance.”