"So much of L.A. life is about coming and going, but the readers here inhabit an in-between space where motion has stopped and time is suspended . . . ."
"Fifteen miles into a 30-mile hike in Glacier National Park, when the blue sky turned black and lightning struck the mountains and made the very soil feel electric, it sure as shit didn’t matter what I looked like."
"Over the years, her friends wondered what ever happened to Antonietta. Was she safe? Was she being well-cared for? Was she even still alive?" —Maria Iqbal for Toronto Star
"A shocking act of violence attracted international attention and split the town over questions of truth and justice. Grand Marais is still trying to piece itself back together."
"Some stories carry echoes of 'Mississippi appendectomies' of the mid-20th century, in which Black women would go in for a different procedure and wake up to learn that their uterus had been removed."
-The psychology of a mass shooter (Mother Jones)
-The phenomenon of Novak Djokovic (The Atlantic)
-Plant anatomy to understand human emotion (Virginia Quarterly Review)
-Lunches with a literary legend (Taste Magazine)
-Surfing . . . in a mall (Slate)
"What does it mean, in the end, to describe a leaf when it may fork into many others? Instead, we describe ferns by the generations of their branching." —Wei Tchou for Virginia Quarterly Review
"Fifteen miles into a 30-mile hike in Glacier National Park, when the blue sky turned black and lightning struck the mountains and made the very soil feel electric, it sure as shit didn’t matter what I looked like." —Krista Diamond on hiking, body image, and giving the body not just fuel, but satisfaction, too.
"Then she fishes half a glossy purple eggplant from the fridge, and a ball of fresh mozzarella, too. She hands me a knife, and we both begin to slice. We work close together. Our shoulders almost touch." Sara Franklin for Taste
"Can you believe that people ever aspired to things other than making a bunch of money on stuff or being the best they could possibly be? Well, they did. That was sort of the idea."
"My perception of wolves might have been different if I grew up on a ranch in Montana, but wolves were like dragons and unicorns. Seeing a wolf in the wild would be like catching a glimpse of Nessie in Scotland."
"That I prefer Roger Federer, all effortless elegance and Swiss-watch precision, perhaps suggests an aesthetic (even an aristocratic) prejudice against the grittier, sweatier, try-hard style that Djokovic brings to the game."
"This community of orcas, documented in the Strait of Gibraltar since the Roman Empire, consists of nearly 90 animals. Some scientists believe that all of them now ram sailing boats."
"The technicians came to check on us periodically, whispering, 'Doing OK?' For the first time in years, I got the sense there was someone in charge who cared about me, who was looking over me. It was not perfect, but it was more tender than the world outside." —Krista Diamond for Slate
In our latest @longreads feature, Emily Zebel goes on a weeklong solo motorcycle trip to find a way to cope after a breakup with the first man she loved following her divorce.
"I don’t tell him that I can’t go home until I learn something. What, I don’t know. Nevermind how."
"There is really no such thing as a big-city newspaper columnist anymore, but Breslin was big—he would literally call reporters on the phone to tell them, 'I’m big.'"
"Thirty years after the era-defining 'Got Milk?' campaign—itself a project of the California Milk Processor Board—the U.S. dairy industry’s PR machine appears to be getting a second wind."