Rob

“I liked staying on the edge and avoiding contact between us. I felt like a drop of rain in a spiderweb, and I was careful not to slide down.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“During the commute home came a dark possibility, a thought he felt trapped in the car with him. It was that he had always relied on his success to separate him from the time and people he’d manipulated to reach it.”
― Kathleen Alcott, America Was Hard To Find

“This had always pissed him off about Romeo and Juliet, its ending platitude that at least the feud was laid to rest and the fighting families had come together as if this somehow made it worth losing their teenagers. As if Romeo and Juliet would have been willing to die just so their parents would get along.”
― Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is

“On Twitter not too long ago, I was discussing the term “dope slap,” which I had traced back (using what was available to me at the time) to Tom Magliozzi, one of the hosts of NPR’s show Car Talk. A dope slap is, as Ray Magliozzi, Tom’s brother, says, “kind of a quick slap to the back of the head when the recipient is unaware that it’s coming,” and when Tom Magliozzi first used it in a Car Talk blog post, it was clear that the dope slap got its name from the dopey target of the smack: “Well, the first thing I’d do is give that kid a dope slap for driving home after the oil light came on. When the oil light comes on, you should always stop the engine immediately.” “I scoured all my sources and found nothing earlier than that,” I said. “Which means that someone will antedate it immediately.”
― Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries