I was a college student when I saw "L'Avventura" for the first of many times, and it changed my life.

Rattle is facing an ocean of troubles that cannot be held back by lashings of charm and spin control.

“Are rainbow parties pretty common?” inquired a rapt Oprah, to which Burford replied, “I think so. At least among the 50 girls that I talked to…this was pervasive.”

Down at the cement factory, operations are supervised by a demonstrative young Turkish woman who favors skin-tight jeans, cowboy boots and strategically tight white blouses. Soldiers try to find an excuse to drop by.

I’ve decided to start prude-proofing myself via a series of daily micro-immersions in sex and violence.

"One bear will teach another bear, and then that bear will do it," he said. "There are bears that peel and bears that don't peel. We target peeling bears."

"There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

Speculators who bought overpriced condos in hope of a quick killing are going to get hosed.

Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Americans have this funny habit of confusing freedom, which they cherish, with choice, which can give them headaches.

The more people know who you are and what you're good at, the 'luckier' you're likely to be.

"No, I’m not going to be in this industry anymore. The industry's dying." He waited a beat, then added, "I'm going to sell drugs to junior high schoolers."

What appears to be wasted time is really jell time.

"I get heartbroken flying into L.A.," he said. "It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?"

Rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less.
This is not a trivial point.

"The young women who choose to wear the niqab, Mr. Rehman told me, are "rebelling against what their parents tell them to do, they’re trying to differentiate themselves."

In the long run, the "swarming" that really counts is the wide-scale mobilization of the global public.

"You are just increasing the size of the haystack."

Grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress.