"[Manute Bol] was breathtaking in person, and not just because of his surreal height and skin so dark that it made him seem purple. [85]
85. Our country is so uptight that this point might be considered racist. Here’s my defense: Manute Bol was fucking purple. I don’t know what else to tell you."
- Bill Simmons, The Book of Basketball

"I was supposed to have spent my twenties (a) hammering away for ninety hours a week at some high-paying, ethically dubious job, drinking heavily, and having explosive sex with a rich array of twenty-something men; (b) awaking at noon every day in my Williamsburg loft to work on my painting/poetry/knitting/performance art, easily shaking off the effects of stylish drugs and tragically hip clubs and explosive sex with a rich array of twenty-something men (and women if I could manage it); or (c) pursuing higher education, sweating bullets over an obscure dissertation and punctuating my intellectual throes with some pot and explosive sex with a rich array of professors and undergrads. These were the models, for someone like me."
- Julie Powell, Julie & Julia

"1. Or at a Lakers game, where you can hear Kobe bitching out teammates and coaches! That reminds me of the highlight of the '08 Finals: Matt Damon cheering the Celts in Game 5 when Phil Jackson turned and hissed, "Sit down and shut the fuck up!" Had they won, I think I would've sacrificed a pinky for Damon to snap into Will Hunting mode and pull the "Hey, Phil, you like apples? . . . How 'bout them apples?" routine."
- Bill Simmons, The Book of Basketball

"All of which is to say that if Edith Wharton came back from the dead, developed a bent for municipal power brokers, cops, crackheads and reportage, and didn't really care what she wore to the office, she'd probably look a little something like David Simon."
- Richard Price, foreword to David Simon's Homicide

"To hear it with the logic of the external world, the threats and counterthreats sound like a prelude to war. But on Fayette Street, this is business as usual. It's gut-level knowledge for all of them: Two boys get to beefing, throwing words, posturing, talking about how they're gonna come back with their Tec-Nine, and everyone else stands around for a minute or two trying to gauge whether the wait is worth the show. The bluster and brinkmanship is constant, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the thing ends with traded insults and maybe an unkept promise to come back with a gun or an older brother or the rest of whatever corner crew is involved. The hundredth time someone comes back in the worst way, but that's what the corner is about. And when the worst finally happens, of course, a homicide detective is left standing over the corpse, trash talking with his partner about the stupidity of the victim, about how the shooter promised to come back with a gun and the victim didn't do shit but wait for him. But the cop doesn't understand: In his world, the threat of a gun would be an epic event, something to bring the adrenaline to a boil. In West Baltimore, a suggestion of violence is the standard terminus to any dispute lasting longer than four minutes."
- David Simon and Edward Burns, The Corner