Sublime

What struck me particularly about him was the mixture of a sort of innate natural ferocity with a similarly innate nobility—a mixture such as I have never come across in any other person.

But what if you were to muster your own authority? I don’t mean making up facts and quotations. I mean, what if the reader trusted your prose, Listened with interest to what you’re saying For the sake of what you’re saying, Instead of noting the complacency, the deference, even the ceremony With which you bow to the authorities you cite? What if th

Who was Jack Gilbert? Students told me he was the most extraordinary man they’d ever encountered. He had seemed not quite of this world, they said. He seemed to live in a state of uninterrupted marvel, and he encouraged them to do the same. He didn’t so much teach them how to write poetry, they said, but why: because of delight. Because of stubborn

Flexible behavior in the face of changing conditions: What else can you call it but wicked smart?

He had an alert look and manner; short, graying dark hair; a clear gaze, no hint of guile—an appealing, trusting guy.

The 1824 election came down to a contest between a member of the English elite, John Quincy Adams, and a member of the Scots-Irish lower class, Andrew Jackson.

Briefly Carleton considered the other man, of whom he’d made such a study he might have been appointed professor of Thomas Studies at the University of Essex. He knew, for example, that Thomas was a confirmed bachelor, as they say, never seen in the company of a beautiful young person or a stately older one; that he had about him the melancholy rel

Trout held up a single finger. “One.” “Was it enthusiastic?” “It was insane. The writer said I should be President of the World.” It turned out that the person who had written this letter was Eliot Rosewater, Billy’s friend in the veterans’ hospital near Lake Placid. Billy told Trout about Rosewater. “My God—I thought he was about fourteen years ol