Andrew Solomon:

Most people imagine that resolving particular problems will make them happy. If only one had more money, or love, or success, then life would feel manageable. It can be devastating to realize the falseness of such tempered optimism. A great hope gets crushed every time someone reminds us that happiness can be neither assumed nor earned; that we are all prisoners of our own flawed brains; that the ultimate aloneness in each of us is, finally, inviolable.

Lev Grossman:

When you're depressed, when you're in bed and feel like you can't get out, you can't imagine doing work or accomplishing anything or anybody loving you. So when you look around you and you see these things happening to other people, they look like magic to you. They look that exotic, that strange, that impossible. And when you begin to crawl out of the pit and reengage with the world, it seems very magical. It felt as though getting out of bed yesterday was impossible, but now you're doing it. Just by returning to daily life, you're a magician.

Miranda July:

During this time I was careful not to think about my life. My life was far below us, in an orangey-pink stucco apartment building. It seemed as though I might never have to return to it now. The salt of his shoulder buzzed on the tip of my tongue. I might never again stand in the middle of the living room and wonder what to do next. I sometimes stood there for up to two hours, unable to generate enough momentum to eat, to go out, to clean, to sleep. It seemed unlikely that someone who had just bitten and been bitten by a celebrity would have this kind of problem.

That evening, I found myself standing in the middle of my living-room floor. I had made dinner and eaten it, and then I had an idea that I might clean the house. But halfway to the broom I stopped on a whim, flirting with the emptiness in the center of the room. I wanted to see if I could start again. But, of course, I knew what the answer would be. The longer I stood there, the longer I had to stand there. It was intricate and exponential. I looked like I was doing nothing, but really I was as busy as a physicist or a politician. I was strategizing my next move. That my next move was always not to move didn't make it any easier.

Jean-Louis Gassee:

There are caves full of riches but, most of of the time, I can't find a path to the mother lode.

Mallory Ortberg:

Run into a cave and break your ankle so that people have to come find you and they see you lying at the bottom of this beautiful cave and maybe there's a waterfall and the light from the crystals makes you look really beautiful and they say "Are you okay?" and you say "I think so" and they say "oh my God have you been here alone this whole time with a broken ankle" and you say "it's okay" and they say "you're so brave" and you are brave and you look so beautiful surrounded by cave crystals and everyone stands over you and says "oh wow" and "you poor beautiful thing" and "I'm so sorry we let you run into the cave but I'm so glad we found you" and let them carry you home and promise to be your best friends forever and that everything's their fault and also they named the cave after you and you're prettier than all of your enemies and your enemies all died of jealousy while you were in the cave.

David Remnick:

Kleptocracies rarely value theoretical tracts. They value numbered accounts. They value the stability of their own arrangements.

Zadie Smith:

She had an idea that Oriental people had their own, secret establishments. (She believed the Jews did, too.) She both admired and slightly resented this self-reliance, but had no doubt that it was the secret to holding great power, as a people. For example, when the Chinese had come to Fatou's village to take over the mine, an abiding local mystery had been: what did they eat and where did they eat it? They certainly did not buy food in the market, or from the Lebanese traders along the main road. They made their own arrangements. (Whether back home or here, the key to surviving as a people, in Fatou's opinion, was to make your own arrangements.)

Andrew Browne:

His real concern is that to get ahead, he's had to make compromises with his principles (he doesn't say bribes, but that is what he means). "I've been forced to prostitute myself," he says, and now he worries that it could all be snatched away. In China, a weak, corrupt legal system may sometimes work in favor of entrepreneurs while they're clawing their way up, cutting corners along the way, but it is almost always a liability once they've made it.

Malcom Gladwell:

Six decades ago, Robert K. Merton argued that there was a series of ways in which Americans responded to the extraordinary cultural emphasis that their society placed on getting ahead. The most common was "conformity" ... The second strategy was "ritualism" ... There was also "retreatism" and "rebellion" ... It was the fourth adaptation ... "innovation." Many Americans -- particularly those at the bottom of the heap -- believed passionately in the promise of the American dream. They didn't want to bury themselves in ritualism or retreatism. But they couldn't conform: the kinds of institutions that would reward hard work and promote advancement were closed to them. So what did they do? They innovated: they found alternative ways of pursuing the American dream. They climbed the crooked ladder.

Alice Goffman:

Can we imagine a world in which the police in poor communities act not as an occupying force ... but instead as mediators of disputes, people residents can turn to for help and support, without fear of going to prison? If we stretch ourselves even further, can we imagine the police connecting residents to jobs and social services, rather than disconnecting them?

People on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the courtroom now acknowledge that the criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. After four decades of zero tolerance and getting tough on crime, we seem poised for change. Can we seize the moment?

Paul Ford:

People silently struggle from all kinds of terrible things. They suffer from depression, ambition, substance abuse, and pretension. They suffer from family tragedy, Ivy-League educations, and self-loathing. They suffer from failing marriages, physical pain, and publishing. The good thing about politeness is that you can treat these people exactly the same. And then wait to see what happens. You don't have to have an opinion. You don't need to make a judgment. I know that doesn't sound like liberation, because we live and work in an opinion-based economy. But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life's riches.

David Foster Wallace:

The traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way?

Most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line -- maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept. who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible -- it just depends on what you want to consider.

Thelonious Monk:

When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!

Mary Meeker and Liang Wu:

The US government is currently experiencing the largest gap between revenue and expenses outside of WW I and WW II.

Dan Geer:

Things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances.

Is the ever-wider deployment of sensors in the name of cybersecurity actually contributing to our safety?

Or is it destroying our safety in order to save it?

William Drenttel:

It's better to be hired for your work than for your price.

Costin Raiu, Director of Kaspersky's Global Research & Analysis Teams:

In the future, we predict the number of small, focused 'APT-to-hire' groups to grow, specializing in hit-and-run operations; a kind of 'cyber mercenary' team for the modern world.

Lillian Ablon, a security researcher at the RAND Corporation:

The ability to attack is certainly outpacing the ability to defend.

Mike Rogers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman:

If anybody in the federal government tells you that they've got this figured out in terms of how to respond to an aggressive cyber attack, then tell me their names, because they shouldn't be there.

Chris Evans, of Google:

Now is a very good time to make a bet on putting a stop to zero-days.

Emily Dickinson:

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see --
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

Jacob Kastrenakes:

Your bag of potato chips can hear what you're saying.

Alexis Madrigal:

The Starbucks latte, as it developed, became to its espresso+milk European ancestors what Panda Express is to high Sichuan cuisine: deracinated, but irresistible.

Washington Post:

Carmen Fuentes, the deputy scheduler for Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) is the type of foodie who could add Nutella to a Choco Taco.

Diana Vreeland:

We all need a splash of bad taste. No taste is what I'm against.

Jana Uyeda, 35, a photographer and social media consultant in Seattle:

I love my friends, but sometimes their taste in restaurants is terrible.

Yarek Waszul:

Tumblr, infectious as it may be, is symptomatic of a vacuous taste-making culture that thrives on fickle inside jokes and the immediacy of novelty qua novelty.

Will Blythe:

... as insufferable in their virtue as a teenage vegan ...

Adam Kotsko:

My local grocery store, in a pretty progressive neighborhood famous for its lesbian population, doesn't even bother to carry recycled paper towels.

Alexander Motyl:

War, unthinkable in Europe for so long, has truly come to the continent.

Dunya Mikhail:

How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!

The war works with unparalleled diligence!
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.

Eliza Griswold:

Chris pointed across the table to Mike, a desert-scorched and silent operator whose oxford-cloth shirt seemed uncomfortably tight on his thick neck. "See how his tan lines are a little off?" Chris asked. "He doesn't wear a suit. He's out there with our partners across the desert, fighting a war that no one will ever know about if we win. How do you sell that to the American people?"

Shachar Mario Mordechai:

Someone will leave behind books and photos,
an old blanket, a magnificent armchair of happiness.
And someone he loves.
But he will not forget to take a coat.
With pockets. As long as he leaves in time
with his face. And with cash.

Caleb:

Before I came out, guys told me, 'The bees, sir, the bees, the bees.' I thought they'd made this stuff up. But it was true. You can hear them coming.

John Lanchester:

The world is full of priesthoods. Incomprehension is a form of consent.

What's the story behind the evident story?

Ira Glass:

Don't wait till you're older, or in some better job than you have now. Don't wait for anything. Don't wait till some magical story idea drops into your lap. That's not where ideas come from. Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now. Be a fucking soldier about it and be tough.

Michael Weber:

Magic is not about someone else sharing the newest secret. Magic is about working hard to discover a secret and making something out of it.

Roger Cohen:

Optimism is irrepressible in the human heart -- and best mistrusted. Our world of hyperconnectivity, and the strains and aspirations that accompany it, is not so novel after all. The ghosts of repetition reside alongside the prophets of progress.

Ben Thompson:

If all you want to do is develop and make something beautiful, then you need to get a job that will pay you to do that.

Ian Bogost:

MagicBands offer a kind of data tourism, an uncanny experience of a future in which we don't just tolerate surveillance but openly embrace it as fashion.

Dataland offers a space that invites us to wonder: what if more of our information relationships took place out in the open?

Perhaps this is all we really want: to participate in the fantasy of the future, to be invited to ponder and respond to it ourselves, rather than to be presented with it already formed.

Frank Chimero:

People don't have to leave what they know to start fixing what's wrong. They can start where they are.

Arthur C. Brooks:

The Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues measured the "negative affect" (bad moods) that ordinary daily activities and interactions kick up. They found that the No. 1 unhappiness-provoking event in a typical day is spending time with one's boss.

Mike Huckabee:

In politics, there are three basic categories. There's campaigning, there's governing and there's talking about it. The easiest of the three is talking about it. It also pays the best.

Felix Salmon:

The problem, in general, is that managers reflexively attempt to pay their employees the minimum necessary to prevent them from leaving, while at the same time making every effort to maximize their own income.

Tim Dowling:

Deflation is only a problem if you're the one trying to sell the cheap thing, or if the incredibly cheap thing is your salary, and your boss can't decide between paying you peanuts and finding someone else who will do your job for even less.

Economist:

At most large Japanese firms, around a third of permanent staff are surplus to requirements, yet cannot be fired due to the country's unclear labour rules.

Had lay-offs been easier, Panasonic, Sony and others would have had far greater financial flexibility to cope with changing market conditions. Instead, their limited voluntary severance packages, typically offering two to three years' pay, are cripplingly expensive. Those who accept them are often the most talented.

William Deresiewicz:

Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they're doing but with no idea why they're doing it.

Not being an entitled little shit is an admirable goal. But in the end, the deeper issue is the situation that makes it so hard to be anything else. The time has come, not simply to reform that system top to bottom, but to plot our exit to another kind of society altogether.

Robert Pogue Harrison:

There would be reason to applaud the would-be world-changers and start-up companies of Silicon Valley if they made it their business to resist or reverse this process of planetary upheaval, the way environmentalists seek to do with the wounds we have afflicted on nature. Sadly they have no such militancy in their souls, nor much thoughtfulness.

In truth Silicon Valley does not change the world as much as it changes my way of being in it, or better, of not being in it. It changes the way I think, the way I emote, and the way I interact with others. It corrodes the worldly core of my humanity, leaving me increasingly worldless.

Clare Malone:

It's funny to see how normal they all look, standing around in their Patagonia gear, these people who brought us now ubiquitous street maps and excellent e-mail design, and, however inadvertently, helped usher in a jarring new reality about privacy. They seem so nice, so trustworthy, as they work the ropes for their climbing friends perched on high precipices. And we have trusted them almost wholeheartedly up until recently, because they seem to have the best of intentions. But who's to say they always will?

Decius:

Money for me, databases for you.

Jodi Quoidbach:

Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. This "end of history illusion" had practical consequences, leading people to overpay for future opportunities to indulge their current preferences.

Om Malik:

Did you know at the time of signing up for Strava, that lovable cycling and running activity tracker is sharing real time user data and selling that to municipalities for 80 cents a year. We, the citizens don't really know what these data-hoarding companies -- big and small -- are really going to do with all the data they have about us in their databases.

It is important for us to talk about the societal impact of what Google is doing or what Facebook can do with all the data. If it can influence emotions (for increased engagements), can it compromise the political process?

Sam Thielman:

Here's the short version: Everyone in advertising is buying exhaustive records of your purchases -- all your purchases -- and comparing them to your viewing habits so that they know which ads you saw and whether or not they changed your behavior.

If you feel like this is kind of invasive, that probably means you understand me so far.