“But what, I wondered, about people living in red America who have embraced immunity? In the national battle over vaccination, their voices have largely been drowned out.”

“But now I’ve been a writer for 30 years, I can understand the impulses that I and he and probably every other writer have: to go after a subject we’re compelled by.”

“At that moment I loved him completely — my grandfather, who could fix anything that broke down in all of Iowa, who made sauerkraut and homemade wine in the garage, who let me win at poker. I listened to him rage, and I heard every word that came spilling unfettered from the dark chambers of his heart.”

“Soon, tons of P2P meth were moving north, without any letup, and the price of meth collapsed. But there was more to the story than higher volume. Ephedrine meth tended to damage people gradually, over years. With the switchover to P2P meth, that damage seemed to accelerate, especially damage to the brain.”

“Of  all the red-tailed hawks that have ever soared on a Texas breeze, only one gets to live in Charlie Alvis’s house, at least during the winter hunting season. ‘My bird has its own bedroom,’ said Alvis, a falconer who’s based in the unincorporated community of Porter, just beyond the northern outskirts of Houston.”

“Across the country, medical boards allow abusive doctors to keep seeing patients. And patients addicted to opioids keep going back.”

“It is a strange sort of alienation, when you make the life-changing decision to return home, only to suspect that you no longer belong.”

“On the day Chiamaka died, many mourned the loss of a bright physicist, some mourned the loss of a friend or family member, while others mourned for her husband and young son. Felix mourned for all of these reasons, but especially for Chiamaka and all the life she did not get to live.”

“Charismatic and ambitious, Mark Lamb embodies a new kind of Trump-era lawman.”

“After Scarlett Mansfield collated 200 accounts of sexual harassment, inspectors put her former school on notice. Could it be the first of many?”