Gregory

“The practice of deep-frying fish was brought to London and popularised by Sephardic Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Spain and Portugal from the sixteenth century; its double act with chips dates to the 1860s, when Joseph Malin, a teenage Ashkenazi Jew from eastern Europe, abandoned his family rug-weaving business after a flash of inspiration inspired him to pair the two. He sold them on the street from a tray hung round his neck; success on the street led to a permanent shop in the East End.”
― Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

“You know what happens when you play a country tune backwards? You get your girl and your truck back, you’re not drunk anymore and your hound dog comes back to life.”
― Elmore Leonard, Pronto

“Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized it beautifully in the preface to his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Instead, they divide the world up into “anthromes.” There is an “urban” anthrome that stretches over five hundred thousand square miles, an “irrigated cropland” anthrome (a million square miles), and a “populated forest” (four and a half million square miles). Ellis and Ramankutty count a total of eighteen “anthromes,” which together extend over thirty-nine million square miles.”
― Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History