Matthew Bird

“America lacked the hereditary aristocracy of Europe, so New York found itself creating its own elite criteria. Four hundred names, roughly the number of people who could reasonably fit in Caroline Astor's Fifth Avenue ballroom, defined the true upper crust of the city.”
― Deirdre Mask, The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

“Suddenly Joan was terrified. She would fail at this. He would scoff at her and lose interest, and then Sander would also scoff, to stay in Bacon’s good graces, so that Bacon would continue to seek patrons for him. They shared entire worlds she had no entry to, and never would: cabals and social circles Sander was welcomed into because he was the celebrated boy-actor, because he ravished and was ravished by those who granted entry to those circles, because he was ambitious to maintain his elevated status. A month ago she’d have been nervous only for losing the opportunity to study with Francis Bacon but now she feared losing Sander.”
― Nicole galland, Boy

“I questioned what else I had already missed so far, in my own life, simply through the limits of my character.”
― Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

“Both Bellcore (the Bell Telephone research company in Livingstone, New Jersey) and Philips (the company that owns Polygram, U2’s label) have set up crude working prototypes of home music delivery systems by hooking up recordable CD players to fiber-optic telephone lines.”
― Bill Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World