YellowG

“The train gives off an earsplitting insect hum. It seems like you’re watching something physically impossible, like a person lifting a house, or hearing a joke so funny the laughter threatens to rip you apart, and then, with a puff of air, it’s over. When”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“I liked the way it felt to speak Chinese—the elegant rise and fall of the tones, the sensuous way my tongue flitted about my mouth and the economy of a language that needed very few words to say a lot. Speaking good French demands control of one’s lips; American English relies on an open mouth; but Chinese can be spoken perfectly even through clenched teeth. “Picture your tongue as a butterfly,” one of my instructors would say, and there it would be, flapping against my mouth and banging against my teeth as I sought to harness it and speak Chinese.”
― John Pomfret, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

“Players from Sweden, Lebanon, and China, for instance, have a reputation for being more aggressive than those from France, England, or India. Younger players are presumed to be looser and more aggressive than older ones. Men are assumed to be more likely to bluff than women. These stereotypes, like any others, are not always true: at the hold ’em games I used to play in at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, the best players were very often women, and they were good in part because they were much more aggressive than their opponents assumed.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction

“The sovereign being equipped with virtue, and his counsellors with wisdom, it remains only for the common people to learn their duties and fulfil them. Since they are not capable of understanding the abstract morality of the sages, of determining for themselves what is correct conduct, they must be instructed by means of concrete and positive precepts. It is these precepts which are embodied in the Rites. The good citizen is one who fulfils regularly and completely his ritual obligations. Instead of a code of morals he has a code of manners.”
― George Bailey Sansom, Japan: A Short Cultural History