Richard Betts:

In times of change, people wonder more consciously about how the world works.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells:

If Ricky Donnell Ross sensed that he had been a pawn for forces he could barely understand, he probably wasn't wrong. The question was: What forces?

Adam Sternbergh, on "House of Cards":

It's a vision of American government not as we wish it were, but as we secretly fear it is.

Mark Danner:

Though we have become accustomed to President Obama telling us, as he most recently did in the State of the Union address, that "America must move off a permanent war footing," these words have come to sound, in their repetition, less like the orders of a commander in chief than the pleas of one lonely man hoping to persuade. What are these words, after all, next to the iron realities of the post–September 11 world?

Rebecca Solnit:

It's as though death came riding in on a pale horse and someone said: "What? You don't like horses?"