Six drinks in, tired of your coworkers, wishing you could just go home and laugh at sitcoms with someone? Maybe get laid? The National's got your back.

--Andrew Gaerig, Review for High Violet

ONE MORE MONTH

Where did the time go?

Their hair was like the dry grass on the hillside, their bare feet toughened by summer. They moved as effortlessly into the boat and across the water--pulling one oar hard, spinning the boat around the dock--as across land. Amphibious children. "We're creating little hedonists," Frank used to say. "Nothing will be as pleasurable as this for the rest of their lives. They'll search everywhere for something that can measure up, and nothing will."

--Maile Meloy, The Children


Damn these stories are good.

If you look out and see an audience of consumers, you want to sell them something. If you look out and see an audience of citizens, you want to share something with them, and there is a difference.

--Bill Moyers on public broadcasting

He wondered how he might court a girl who was older, and a lawyer, a girl who lived clear across the state and couldn't think about anything but that distance.

--Maile Meloy, Travis, B

I think I've made my decision.

I think.

My daddy is a smart man, he says that whatever I choose will be good because I will make it good for me. He also says that whatever I choose, I should make that decision and never look back. But ahhh, my brain isn't so great at never looking back.

It will be nice to decide and then refocus on the important thing--the important thing being fixing the world.

“La Vita Nuova” explained how to become a great poet. The secret was to fall in love with a perfect girl but never speak to her. You should weep instead. You should pretend that you love someone else. You should write sonnets in three parts. Your perfect girl should die.

--Allegra Goodman, La Vita Nuova