Ayush Mehrotra

“She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should've carried a goddamn telephone around with her.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“But the media played a huge role in preserving our equilibrium. People actually read the editorial pages of major newspapers. Most everyone knew who was on the latest cover of Life, Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. Together, we sat in our living rooms and watched our country bury a president, then his brother, and, in between, Dr. King. We witnessed the first televised war, the first lunar landing, and the first resignation by a president. We disagreed frequently, but at least we started from the same general base of information. That's no longer true. Today citizens get their news from a kaleidoscope of sources, some reliable, many not - and we're pretty sure it's the other guy, not us, who is being taken in by partisan propaganda and fake news.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Self-sacrifice, we drool, is a virtue. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thoughts? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain.”
― Ayn Rand