Date: February 16, 2012

"Kids who have ample mental horsepower, an incredible work ethic and no idea what to do next."

— Klein, Ezra (b. May 9, 1984)

Date: October 28, 2012

"Each grasped, in the unflinching gaze of the other, a silent acknowledgment of the nobility of man, especially as manifested in work, the work that purified the soul the way steel is purified in the smelter. That sort of thing."

— Saunders, George (b. 1958)

Date: September 27, 2012

"The conservative mind, a repository of fresh ideas just two decades ago, is now little more than a click-click slide projector holding a tray of apocalyptic images of modern life that keeps spinning around, raising the viewer’s fever with every rotation."

— Lilla, Mark (b. 1956)

Date: July 23, 2012

"I'm O.K., you tell them, but with each passing week the depression deepens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul."

— Díaz, Junot (b. 1968)

Date: 2012

"Once, borracho, at breakfast, / he said: The heart can only be broken / / once, like a window."

— Corral, Eduardo C.

Date: April 15, 2013

"Big data is like the offensive coordinator up in the booth at a football game who, with altitude, can see patterns others miss. But the head coach and players still need to be on the field of subjectivity."

— Brooks, David (b. 1961)

Date: June 19, 2013

"Where they (it was held) re-made the world visually and emotionally in the smithies of their tortured souls (to paraphrase James Joyce), Warhol blithely swiped subject matter from mass media."

— Sartwell, Crispin (b. 1958)

Date: July 1, 2013

"Many lines of poetry are so long-embedded in my memory that I find them appearing when I speak or write. Sometimes I am quoting. Sometimes I am unconsciously drawing from the reservoir."

— Ebert, Roger (1942-2013)

Date: July 12, 2013

"The disheartening fact is that for every college professor who made Shakespeare or Lawrence come alive for the lucky few—the British scholar Frank Kermode kindled Shakespeare into an eternal flame in my head—there were countless others who made the reading of literary masterpieces seem like two ...

— Siegel, Lee (b. 1957)

Date: February 15, 2013

"We become a nation of survivalists, alone in the bunkers of our mind, with nothing but empty static on the radio."

— Pierce, Charles P. (b. 1953)