When you’re born you’re not given an age. You’re a baby.
— Sid
What a sight. A small frog hopping through a pool of blood that’s issuing from the head of a Viet Cong, lying on the green grassy lawn of the U.S. embassy.
— Don North ABC News, “06: Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968),” The Vietnam War
Getting killed is forever. And, that was something that I had known theoretically but I now understood particularly.
— Harrison, “04: Resolve (January 1966-June 1967),” The Vietnam War
After years of writing traditional profiles, McPhee was bored of the form, so he decided to write a quadruple portrait: one character (D) as revealed through separate interactions with three other characters (A, B and C). He came up with the structure first, then spent months trying to come up with the right people.
— Sam Anderson, "The Mind of John McPhee," The New York Times Magazine
O shit! I didn’t realize there would be art in the stairwells!
— Lily after impulsively touching art in a stairwell at MAD
Congrats on getting your art in The Met.
— Joke Lily didn’t say to woman sketching behind ticket counter
I’m busier now that I’ve retired.
— Man taking Bookbinding II A (lives in NJ with a wood shop, taking class to fix up old books passed down thru generations in his church)
My sister thought they were calming.
— Dr. Natbony on stock photos in frames
…where he worked for a time as a pastry chef at the Parker House. He shoveled snow in London, tinted photographs in Paris.
— Peter Coyote on Ho Chi Minh, “01: Déjà Vu (1858-1961),” The Vietnam War
The lodestar.
— John McCain, “The Fighter,” 60 Minutes
What they looked like in the hand.
— Gabriel Willow on how birds were shot and named before binoculars existed
So you don’t know and I don’t know. We have a lot in common!
— Old lady on bench in the Cooper Hewitt garden, wondering if there was someone speaking or singing next
He had this great idea! Making books for kids!
— Henry on Mr. Ding-A-Ling
But the depression that overtakes me when I’ve turned in book, I must confess is real and deep.
— David Cornwell, “Le Carré,” 60 Minutes
It was my idea.
— Sid on Ken and Mike
The true question for the United Nations today, for people all over the world who hope for better lives for themselves and their children, is a basic one: Are we still patriots?
— Donald Trump, Speech to the UN
The last person was watching The Matrix.
— Dental nurse
I hope that’s not his face, cuz that’s little.
— Man on Mickey Rourke’s face mask from The Wrestler in the Museum of the Moving Image
You should take a ton and put them in each other’s bathrooms.
— Lily on monogrammed napkins from different places
The Squirrel Hunter
— Painting by Horace Pippin