Nick Masopust

“People thought there was some big Democratic Party apparatus making moves, putting people in, setting things up. But it wasn't a chessboard; it was just one old man and his enablers carrying out his every wish.”
― Jake Tapper; Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again

“It was all so familiar from Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean: the collapsing infrastructure, the intermittent electricity supply, the air of lassitude and disorganization, the ancient forms. It brought back memories of multiple trips to the visa office in Bujumbura, in the small African county of Burundi. I was also reminded of Britain in the 1970s, when nothing worked properly, the tea break was sacrosanct and an obstructive time-wasting surliness prevailed at every interface between institutions and the public. But I'd never come across anything like it in America before.”
― Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

“The people fleeing in 2001 did not face oily smoke from the burning garage on the lower floors, as those in 1993 had. And the tenants had the advantage of the stairwell improvements made by the Port Authority. As a result, in less than an hour's time, thousands of people, including many who had stared at their fingernails during fire drills, had successfully climbed down the stairs. That was the good news. Now they had to be routed down the escalators from the mezzanine to the lobby, and to do that, they had to get past the windows that looked out onto the plaza. The view froze many of them. The stairs had been windowless, the roaring fires unseen, the anxiety powerful but lacking shape. Now the evacuees found that however terrible the pictures playing in their heads on the way down may have been, the reality on the plaza turned out to be worse. Charred body parts. Shoes. Pieces of plane. Flaming debris. Luggage. A windowpane covered in blood. Red garments that looked as if they had been quickly discarded. In fact, they were what was left of people from the upper floors of the north tower. The impact on the evacuees was palpable. Some gasped. Cops at the top of the escalators thought they could see panic in their faces.”
― Jim Dwyer, 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers

“If you’re leading a room, you need to be aware that your effectiveness with your audience has much in common with how an actor is viewed. If that actor forgets his lines or freezes onstage, or even if he just stumbles, the audience will recognize that he’s a performer going through the motions and some of the magic will be lost. They might get distracted. They might even sneak a peek at their phones. If you “break character,” it sends a message to the audience that what you are delivering is not authentic. And if you’re not an actor onstage, but someone whose authority might be questioned or complicated-if you’re giving a sales pitch or conducting a press briefing, say-they’ll feel you’re just pretending, and they’ll think you’re trying to trick them.”
― Jen Psaki, Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World