GQ

“And so these books, with their gauzily painted or starkly heraldic covers, their comical abundance of pages published for the delight of furtive young boys and girls curled up reading by themselves in bookstore corners, waiting eagerly for their authors to publish the next installment (picture me here one more time, a child again, sleepy-eyed and confused, surrounded by the battered paperbacks and hardcovers I’ve lugged to every house and apartment I ever lived in) became…this. The biggest and most expensive business in all of television.”

“All around him, it has been lightless for some time, except for the light from the lamp on his head. If it were to go out, he would not be able to see his hand in front of his face. Given that he’s not breathing, there’s no real sound either. Just: sensory oblivion. Spooky stuff.”

“When members trickle out of a commune but retain their stake in the property, ownership can become a tricky issue. Often co-owners will refuse to sell their share because of ideological reasons—many members of Northern California’s communes acquired land to liberate it from logging and developers. This is why large, expensive swaths of land sometimes remain uninhabited even after all members of a commune have long since decamped.”

“For such thieves, there is no more desirable prize than the crown jewels of the great monarchies of Europe. Putting aside whatever cultural significance these treasures may have later accrued—landing them in museums—the simple fact is that these pieces were made of materials that are still quite valuable today. The authorities feared that if they didn’t catch a quick break, pieces of the Green Vault collection would be lost forever.”

“Wes starring in films that have nothing to do with Native American heritage is something we acutely desire: to be allowed to play parts without having to authenticate our realness as Indians.”

“He got famous playing a certain kind of funny guy on SNL, but when Jason Sudeikis invented Ted Lasso, the sensitive soccer coach with the earnest mustache, the actor found a different gear—and a surprise hit. Now, ahead of the show’s second season, Sudeikis discusses his wild ride of a year and how he’s learning to pay closer attention to what the universe is telling him.”

“Through the glass looking onto the tarmac, we watched the coffin being raised towards the cargo hold of the parked plane. It was inside a shipping container, wrapped thoroughly. It might not have been obvious that it was a coffin.”

“Each had come to America with the hope of making life-changing money that they could send back home to their families. What they found was an often desperate existence in their adopted homeland.”

“And he said something I would never forget. ‘The best fighter in tae kwon do never fights,’ he said. ‘He always finds another way.”

“It’s been an overwhelming year—the isolation, the stalled shoots, the erosion of our democracy—but he finds that here in central Montana simpler conflicts abide.”