From notebook no. 26, wherein Arbus writes down dialogue she overhears at an exhibition of her photographs at MoMA:
3/1/67
Man: They’re nothing.
Woman: What?
Man: Nothing. I could go out and do the same thing.
Woman: Well, why don’t you?
Man: You don’t think I could?
Woman: I believe you. I just want to see you do it.
Man: Do you think that’s good photography?
From the current issue of GQ magazine, a story by Eric Konigsberg on Rocco DiSpirito:
He also feels the tuna needed higher-grade caviar. “Get some osetra where the eggs will be more intact,” he tells Max. This time he requests a one-pound can that, at the wholesale price, costs $1000. “This is the kind of thing you struggle with every night in a restaurant. ‘Should we get this caviar or the cheaper one?’ Nobody would ever notice the difference. It’s really not worth it except if you simply want them to have the best meal they possibly could. I’m not sure I see what’s so bad about that.
From Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Lecture in 2006, via The New Yorker:
Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger . . . but today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature ever could. What literature most needs to tell and to investigate now is humanity’s basic fears: the fear of being left outside, the fear of counting for nothing, and the feeling of worthlessness that comes with such fears—the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kin. . . .
So now we’re back in Waltham, MA, minus half our luggage. Two of the four bags we checked in at Vancouver International have not made it here. The agent at the baggage services counter at Boston Logan said they’re being sent on the red eye from Las Vegas and are due to arrive in the morning.