People From New York City

"[Literary translation work] has all the pleasures of creative writing, and you never have writer’s block."

"(Speaking about his translation work of a diary by Berthe Weill) When it comes to typographical style, Berthe Weill is happily inimitable. She doesn't waste time on line breaks, so passages with a lot of dialogue look like sheets of mud. And she never met an ellipsis she didn't like. French writers use ellipses fairly often, but we avoid them in English because they... look vague... In my early drafts, I eliminated most of the ellipses, but I restored many of them later. That's because Weill's prose rhythm is closer to Machine Gun Kelly than Marcel Proust, and I realized that the ellipses help smoooth out her darting leaps from topic to topic."

"Rodarmor's translation is seamless, rendered with that appearance of effortlessness that only the most gifted and painstaking translators can accomplish."

"Good writers are an editor's stock in trade (...) You have to treasure them and treat them right."

"Food makes history in France, in legend and in fact. (...) But when Charles de Gaulle radioed the French underground that the D-Day invasion was imminent, his message included the key phrase les carottes sont cuites. Literally, this means "the carrots are cooked," and metaphorically "it's all over." What other nation marches to war in the glow of beta carotene?"

"I hope this collection [of short stories from French authors] does justice to that variety [of distinctive literary voices]. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, a few are mysterious. The excerpts may seem to end too soon, but that's all to the good. These pieces are neither bonbons nor full-course meals. They're more like hearty appetizers. You're at a bountiful buffet, and you should feel free to come back for more."

"Jokes [are] the bane of every trasnlator's existence."

"He spoke very clearly, warning us as a people of God of the dictatorship of relativism, not to be co-opted by the world around him. May we be strengthened to grow in our love of God by Benedict's example."

"Never allow yourself to be turned away from the hope offered by the gospel. Now, you are not only a hearer of this gospel but also its minister."

"Fear is a normal reaction, and even priests and those in religious life will also experience fear, but fear can lead us to a deeper faith, it turns into a deeper trust in God if we allow God to be part of the journey."

"He was always first a priest and a bishop and administrator second. He brought a certain human touch to the work he did so it was very encouraging."

"As I got to know her better and just fell in love fast, I learned what drives Kamala. And it's what you've seen over these past four years and especially these past four weeks. [...] She finds joy in pursuing justice. She stands up to bullies, just like my parents taught me to. She likes to see people do well, but hates when they're treated unfairly. [...] Her empathy is her strength."

"I'm humbled, but if this is what God wants, if he kicks the ball in your direction, you might as well run with it. I honestly never thought about it for a minute before it happened that I would be named a bishop. I was surprised myself."

"In July 2016, Trump tweeted a meme declaring that Hillary Clinton was "the most corrupt candidate ever"—with those words emblazoned over a six-pointed Jewish star superimposed on a pile of money. The meme had previously been popularized on a neo-Nazi website. Shortly before the election, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Kevin MacDonald, America’s premier white-supremacist academic, who has argued that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western countries, pumping the marginal malcontent into the political mainstream."

"[I]s Trump a philo-Semite or an anti-Semite? The answer is both. The principle that explains his seemingly contradictory outlook toward Jews is simple: Trump believes all the anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews. But he sees those traits as admirable. To Trump, the belief that Jews are foreign interlopers who use their wealth to serve their own clannish interests is not a negative — as it is for traditional anti-Semites — but rather a positive. He wants Jews to be his attorneys and manage his money, so that he, too, can be rich. He wants them in his political corner, so that he, too, can be powerful. He wants to buy politicians, just like he thinks they do. As a man who has always stood solely for his own naked self-interest, Trump does not see the anti-Semitic conception of the self-interested Jew as a complaint, but rather a compliment. He prioritizes his needs ahead of the national interest, and so he sees the idea that Jews might do the same with themselves or with Israel as entirely natural."

"Out of 8 billion people on the planet, there are only 16 million Jews—but far, far more anti-Semites."

"Joint commissions would foster the ecclesial communion which sustains our episcopal collegiality and become suitable forums in which we address together problems that seem almost intractable when we try to address them in isolation from one another."

"I ask all to continue to pray for the unborn who died, for all those who have experienced the pain of abortion, and for those who cannot understand our divine and steadfast calling to champion this cause."

"Those who have a service to their country have a high vocation."

"We are called to serve the people in the parish. We are servants of the people. The more we serve them, and in serving them, we love them—the more they respond. That's when the Church grows."

"Our country is not perfect, but I love her because of the good that she accomplishes. I must work to make the country better, not by tearing her down but working to build her up."

"I truly believe that one day we will find peace in our world, but only through prayer and sacrifice."

"Maybe it’s a little bit cart before the horse in the sense that we had the [climate data] disclosure requirements before we had a utility, but now we’re rapidly catching up."

"It is a “peerless group of standard setters and policy makers and government officials” interested in seeing the highest quality, most accessible data made available to everyone."

"It has been an incredibly rewarding experience to work with so many dedicated SEC staff who strive every day to protect investors and ensure our markets operate with integrity,” “Over the past four years we have brought a record number of enforcement actions, engaged in one of the busiest rulemaking periods, and gained greater authority from Congress to better fulfill our mission."

"It’s amazing what people will stop doing when they have to tell the world what they’ve been doing."

"You don’t have to be stick thin, you can be you and I love that."

"Every actor has some form of stage fright, but, if you love what you do, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just part of the game."

"Harry Byrd and his organizations were rich and valuable parts of any southern uniqueness of history and humanity. Byrd was born of the somber side of southern history. His organization, notwithstanding its faults, was truly coined from the mint of its time. If it was parsimonious, it emerged from a period when Virginia had little of which to give. If it feared deficits, it remembered the state's staggering Reconstruction debts. If it was oligarchic, it was so by reason of long inheritance. If it was regionally oriented, it bore still the scarred tissue of the Civil War. If it was rurally flavored, it respected the power of the farmer's franchise and the state's agrarian heritage. If it was slow- too slow- to change, Virginia had long been changeless."

"There are those who end life feeling the future will nourish their cause. There are those also whose causes pass with themselves. Harry Byrd's cause belonged to the latter category. In the nation a more positive role for federal government was fast becoming an American political axiom; likewise, Harry Byrd's Virginia would soon seem but yesteryear's quaint and curious memento. But Byrd's personal cause- his honesty, courtesy, in short, his humanity- was not tied to time. The greatest men have often urged dated or debatable specifics. George Washington urged against foreign alliances; Thomas Jefferson dreamed of an agrarian utopia; Woodrow Wilson warred against bigness in American life; Robert E. Lee struggled valiantly for a divided nation. History values men as much for what they are for as for what they espouse. Let not its view of balanced budgets determine its judgment of Harry Byrd."

"The graduates return to barracks for the final uniform change, then spread out across the post for their swearing-in ceremonies. George is sworn in by the rabbi. Captain Parades swears in a bunch of Guppies on the Plain. At a tent by the water, before his parents, Huck is sworn in by Major Vermeesch. His mother and father thank the officer for what he's practiced on their son. It's a long march to bring Vermeesch and Huck to this spot together. Before he leaves, the major hands Huck a gift, a copy of the military novel Once an Eagle. "Next to the Bible," Vermeesch says, "this is probably the best book ever written. Just read it, OK?" A couple months later, when Huck actually starts the novel, a memo on official West Point stationary falls from between the pages. He's not going to read it- he assumes the major stuck it there as a bookmark and then forgot about it. Then he glances at the subject line: it's the official record of their counseling session, from February 2000. There were all the TAC's warnings about "discipline" and "separation" and "questioning your desire to be an Army officer." In the upper right corner, beside the date 6/1/02, Vermeesch has scribbled in, "What a transformation. Continue to make us proud.""

"Applying to West Point is a clerical road march. Fifty thousand high school juniors step off together, filling out the official request-for-information form. From there it's a test of stamina, a battle of attrition. Twelve thousand candidates complete the application. Six thousand make it to the physical aptitude examination stage, a fitness pop quiz- push-ups, pull-ups, standing long jump, three-hundred-yard dash. Service academies are the only institutions in the country that will measure how far you can toss a basketball from a kneeling position. (A little under seventy feet is the minimum.) Four thousand candidates are nominated by their senators or congressmen. The congressional nomination is a round-robin event, ten candidates competing for each slot, elected officials taking a turn as admissions officers, sifting through transcripts, recommendations, and clean-cut photographs. (Especially ambitious parents will snag jobs at a congressman's in-town headquarters, hoping to gain their kids an inside track.) If your parents are career military, you can jump the line and apply directly to the president. If one of them happens to be disabled, deceased, POW or MIA- or a recipient of the Medal of Honor- your file skips all the way to the superintendent's desk at West Point. Then the folks at admissions get down to the elimination round, stacking valedictorians against team captains, yearbook editors against debaters. Two thousand hardy candidates are pronounced qualified for admission, but only about twelve hundred get offered actual West Point places. They receive a plaque in the mail. In many small towns, friends and neighbors stop in for viewings."

"I came to love, really love, road marching. It's called a suck or a haze at West Point, but I think the cadets aren't being fair to it. There's something wonderful about being in a column of marching people: the gravel popping under soles, the leather flexing in boots, the kind of saddle-top sounds as the ruck (what a backpack gets called in the Army) frames settle. Occasionally someone, out of sheer misery, sighing Oooh, or just blowing out air, which in the general silence is like a whale breaching and then slipping back under the surface. You can watch a leaf float down from a tree or stare at the guy's rifle in front of you. The boiling of life down to its basic questions: Can you do this? Can you hang with the rest of us? Those questions don't get asked much, in the civilian world."

"For ten minutes there's nothing. Because this is a way to commemorate loss: with an absence, with stillness, with nothing. A steady sprinkler noise of insects rises off the grass, treetops rustle like the sound of approaching water. A truck bumps down a distant road, dragging a hole through the quiet. The cadets stare out to where they sky ends behind the dark, bulky hills. The drill team fires a twenty-one-gun salute. Seven rifles, three shots apiece, each volley followed by a fluffy spreading echo. Then there's the night with its chilly smells of granite and grass and powder. The first slow notes of a bugle, a mournful taps: up the scale, over the scale, down the scale. Then the cadet bagpipe team begins. Matthew MacSweeney is with them, playing "Amazing Grace," with its frills and edges. Faraway music, crimped by sadness, to escort the week's losses over the Plain. After a moment, the cadets sing the alma mater. The sound is close to breathing, the faintest way four thousand people can sing one song. Then the cadets file out- the snap and click of shoes, a rush of gray and white, faces going visible in the light from doorways- and the night is left alone with itself. A quarter hour later, Josh Rizzo is back in his room, staring at his hand. "I didn't know if I was ready," he says, "until this shit happened. I mean, I came here originally to play baseball. But I know now, I'm here to defend this nation. I have no fears, no qualms about going." He runs his fingers over his ring. "It's weird. When I first got this ring, I thought, 'Look at this cool ring. I can get any job I want.' Now I look at it and I think, 'We are called.' I've got a job to do. I've got to defend my home.""

"Ecumenism is a gift from God, a gift that becomes possible through prayer."

"Don’t forget that the artist still has to be a woman. Nourish them both. (p317)"

"I want you to soar. I want you to go out and find your path and create your own story. (p321)"

"(How did Daughters of the Stone come to being?) It evolved over a long period of time for many reasons. One important reason was the absence of authentic stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans in American literature. I wanted to tell our stories, our way. When I started, I thought I was going to write memoir. Very soon it became evident that I would need the freedom of fiction to include the many stories that had not been told. It wasn't about me. It was about a whole group of people who had been erased from our national dialogue."

""Nightmares are for people who refuse to listen to their hearts. People who have lost their way, who are hollow. Fear slips into those hollow places. It is the very emptiness that draws the fear." (p164)"

"“What you’ll be left with in the end will sustain you much more than any illusion you may have brought with you. Because here in addition to all the problems of poverty, political intrigue, corruption, jealousy, and sociological and historical denial, you’ll also find familia, respeto, dignidad, amor, trabajo, cariño. And yes, you will find racism, alive and well, just like you left it up north.” (p297)"

"These are the stories. My stories, their stories—just as they were told to my mother and her mother and hers. They were given to me for safekeeping, and now I give them to you. (first lines, Prologue)"

"The babble that rose around them as they stood on the pier was deafening. It sounded like no speech Pola had ever heard, the words, jagged, grating sounds that attacked the ear."

"Like a primeval wave, these stories have carried me, and deposited me on the morning of today. They are the stories of how I came to be who I am, where I am. (p14)"

"“...We all have stories. Sometimes the pain lies so heavily inside us that it can only be whispered. Sometimes it can't be spoken out loud at all. So you think you're different? There are many silences. You've got one kind but each of us has her own. Listen and you will hear them all around you...You're not alone in your pain, never have been. We're all part of each other's pain and can be a part of each other's healing too. But when you clutch on to the first, you'll miss out on the second.” (p19)"

"Pola closed her eyes. She thought about all that had already been taken from her; her lovely fingers, her teeth, her body, her untouched womanhood, her laughter. But they hadn't taken everything. She clung to her faith, her soul, and her secret-the seed she knew was growing deep within her."

"I don't map out my novels. I go where my characters take me. In Daughters of the Stone, I wanted to explore how the past acts as a foundation for supporting the present and building towards the future. I also wanted to explore art, and especially storytelling, as healing and guiding mechanisms in our society."

"Remember to open your heart. Learn to recognize gifts offered on your journey. (chapter 25 p325)"

"Your body is only a vessel. Your essence is inviolate. It is only when you give up your soul that you are lost."

"“We all carry our nightmares in unspoken places. The details are different, but the outcome is the same. They want to steal our humanity, to ease the weight into their own souls. Don’t you let them. Don’t give them one piece of you they can’t take. Don’t you become the empty vessel they want to believe you are.”"

"She knows for certain that the poisonous barb of humiliation has done much more damage than the lash ever did. (p277)"