“When there are political problems, Morocco opens the doors and tells us to go,” said 24-year-old Ajoub el-Arrot, one of 50,000 migrants who crossed the border into a small Spanish town in less than 48 hours, seeking a better life in Europe.
“I watch the History Channel like most guys watch Pornhub,” Bill Maher, winner of the 2026 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, said. (New York Times, August 2)
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“A lot of our churches are turning into beautiful museums,” said Justin Lester, pastor of San Francisco's Friendship Baptist Church, who created an AI duplicate of himself. “We’re living in the future, whether we like it or not. We can’t afford to sit this one out.”
“I always said that there is no moral test to be in the Portrait Gallery,” said Kim Sajet, former director of the Smithsonian museum.
“Some of the themes in Brand New Day [the latest Spiderman film which greatly exceeded box office expectations on opening weekend] that stoke Gen Z include mental health challenges, loneliness and being unseen by the ones you love,” said Greg Durkin, the founder of Enact Insight, an entertainment research firm. (New York Times, August 3)
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“It’s the visible lack of [immigration] control that’s the problem,” said Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a London institute that focuses on integration and identity. “That will resonate with the core audience of the populist parties.” (New York Times, August 4)
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“It’s a currency where you have no instinct to know what you’re using, and the accounting practices aren’t even there for it,” said Howard Rubin, an economist who advises companies on technology spending. “The A.I. stuff is being treated as an investment right now, but it’s a risky investment in case it has no return.”
“In many ways, Trump represents the epitome of America’s frustrations with Iran,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official who has studied the country for decades. “He has been both the most desirous of making a deal with Iran, and the one who used the most force against it. He has found that neither got him what he wanted.”
“Twenty is plenty for urban streets, whether you’re on a bike or driving an S.U.V.,” said Ben Furnas, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a safe-streets advocacy group. (New York Times, August 5)
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“People have been telling us that some of the bears are not spending as much, because they’re trying to lose weight,” said Steve August, a visitor to Provincetown during "Bear Week"--and the Ozempic era. “We have a friend who has a cupcake shop and they are ordering the small cupcakes and not the big cupcakes.” (New York Times, August 5)
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“Is there some cultural change in the way people are parenting?” asked Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, referring to college graduates who are returning home in greater numbers after graduation. “You see kids today and the degree to which they’re interacting with parents, that’s completely different than the world of 50 years ago, 25 years ago.”
“I’m afraid that this kind of woman [Martha Stewart, Liza Minnelli, Isabella Rossellini and Marlene Dietrich] doesn’t exist anymore,” the actress Greta Lee said. “It’s this very strong presence and force that is really unburdened by the considerations of social media and these sort of more earthly concerns of the internet.” (New York Times, August 9)
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“She’s happy, you can tell,” said Zane Kesey, 65, son of Ken, whose Day-Glo-painted Merry Prankster bus will return to San Francisco for the first time since 1969 for exhibition in Golden Gate Park. “She’s thrilled to have people talking about her, paying attention to her and all that she meant.”
“I can tell you as someone who has frequently had Black mayors on my show, it is rare for non-Black American mayors to want to be this vocal in communicating with Black-owned media,” said Roland Martin, a political commentator who hosted Mayor Zohran Mamdani on his YouTube channel more than once.
“I have been following traffic to Truth Social for years, and I am really struck by the steepness of the plunge [36% fewer monthly visitors this year compared to last year],” said Howard Polskin, who publishes a newsletter which tracks the right-wing news media. “When you think of how much Trump uses Truth Social as a megaphone you would think the numbers would be skyrocketing.”
“It’s the classic generational reaction: If your boss comes in wearing sneakers, the natural reaction is to do something different,” said Ben Kriz, a men’s fashion writer who has begun wearing loafers to work, like many of his peers. “It’s like what happened with jeans.” (New York Times, August 11)
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“Now real life isn’t a movie, but given the circumstances, I’m not sure I could ever script a moment like that for a heroic main character,” Hollywood screenwriter Andrew W. Marlow said about the recent use of Air Force One as a decoy for President Trump by the Secret Service on a flight from Ankara to London. “If the threat were that great, it’s hard to imagine the audience rooting for any character who would trade his own safety by treating the remaining civilians onboard as potential sacrificial lambs, especially without their informed consent.”
“We’re not allowing children to learn that they’re both physically and psychologically tough,” said Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College and the author of the forthcoming book, Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety. “We assume they’re fragile and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. (New York Times, August 13)
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“All the single left-wing men in this city are about to line up nightly for dinner in her district until [Alexndria Ocasio-Cortez] picks one like the suitors in The Odyssey, Asad Dandia, a Brooklyn-based community organizer, wrote on X, after it was revealed the New York City Congressional representative was now single. (New York Times, August 14)
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“That’s what it is to be a Jew, in some ways,” said Henry Stern, a California state senator who introduced a bill that would include an optional box for Jewish ethnicity on all demographic data forms, from college applications to public assistance programs. “Being really comfortable with tension, and being comfortable with paradoxes, and understanding that we’re a people, we’re a nation, we’re an ethnicity, we are a religion, too. We don’t fit naturally. And that’s why we’re such a pain.” (New York Times, August 15)
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“The canal stands as one of my proudest battles, no question, but greatness is a strange thing,” an A.I. Teddy Roosevelt responded at the new presidential library in North Dakota's Badlands when asked by President Trump at its opening if the Panama Canal was his greatest achievement. “I measure my greatest work by the lives improved, parks set aside, food and drugs made safe, the square deal given to all, not just to a few.”
“In the car with my mother as a child, this lady [Shania Twain] taught me to sing. She also taught me that men are trash,” Harry Styles told the crowd at Coachella before introducing her during his 2022 set. (New York Times, August 16)
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“[New York Harbor has] become a free-for-all,” said Roland Rexha, secretary-treasurer of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, an international union. "You have everything from bootleg mariners to jet skis and people in canoes out there cutting in front of the Staten Island Ferry. And they just don’t realize that the ferry is not a car that can just stop on a dime.” (New York Times, August 17)
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“She just couldn’t believe it that there were these stuffy Washington wives who were denying artistic freedom to musicians,” Rage-Against-the-Machine frontman Thom Morello said of his mother, Mary, who founded Parents for Rock and Rap in 1987. “When I was growing up, there was a lot of Kiss and Alice Cooper being played in the house, and she realized that it was not corrupting my soul.” (New York Times, August 18)
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"We teachers must remain students — and model what we want to see," writes Matt Dinan, the director of the great books program at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick. We need to recover the passion that drove us to our books, to the lab. We need to embody love of learning for its own sake against the pervasive message that higher education should be vocational, and we need to clarify the basic questions that make our subjects worth studying. (New York Times, August 19)
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“Memory fades after three generations,” said Thomas Bagger, the German ambassador to Italy. “Even the Holocaust does not resonate as it once did, and nor does the imperative of integration in Europe.”
“If the next couple of years are dry, the risk to Colorado River water users is extraordinary,” said Jennifer Pitt, who directs the Colorado River Program at the National Audubon Society. “There is no buffer to rely on anymore.”
“What [Henry] Flagler did with a raw landscape 100 years ago, [developer Stephen] Ross is trying to do with a raw, largely undeveloped business landscape [in West Palm Beach],” said Lester Standiford, a professor at Florida International University. “I see him engaged in an equal kind of pioneering effort.”
“There has always been this aura here, this magical thinking,” said Leo Braudy, a Los Angeles cultural historian and the author of The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. “Everybody thinks, ‘I’m beautiful,’ or ‘I’m handsome.’ Everybody thinks, ‘If those people can make it in Hollywood, so can I.’”(New York Times, August 23)
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“[The data center issue] absolutely shakes up the snow globe on the partisan coalitions in a part of the world where Republicans have been dominant,” said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster. “It’s one of the few issues today that does not immediately code as red or blue, left or right.”
“Every candidate in 2028 will have their own cooked poll factory,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist. “Polls now are not just a way of measuring the horse race. It’s a way for candidates and their allies to influence the horse race.”
“The point of life, I think, is to make the world better for your family, your community, for humanity,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, MD who served as a health policy adviser in the Obama administration and is a critic of the modern wellness industry. “We’re here for a short time, and it’s not all about us.” (New York Times, August 24)
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"French, in Canada, is not a business matter," writes Stephen Marche. "Its place in our nation transcends absolutely any market-based consideration. It is not something that gets put on the table." (New York Times, August 25)
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“Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts, said Dolly Parton. "Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out. Not everything I write is good, but it’s all good for me — like therapy.” (New York Times, August 26)
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“They are threatening to shut down the Southwest,” Brenda Burman, the general manager of the Central Arizona Project said of a longstanding federal agreement to ration Colorado River water flow. “It’s not possible to picture it.”
“I guarantee you, if it matters, that I have experienced true love, true heartbreak and everything in between, including no small amount of wreckage,” wrote Tim Curry, who refused to discuss his private life, in his 2025 memoir, Vagabond. “Which, naturally, helps inform who I am. I have loved and been loved and I hope you have, too. But I’m not interested in your romances.” (New York Times, August 27)
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“Whether it was in a big law firm or on Wall Street, where he and I grew up, or here in politics, you realize there are certain guys out there who think gay guys are weak and you have to disabuse them of that notion,” said Sean Patrick Maloney, a former Democratic congressman from New York, who is gay. “And sometimes that means getting in their face and telling them to go fuck themselves. And Scott [Bessent] can do that with the best of them.”
“Bring on Picasso, bring on Matisse,” Yayoi Kusama wrote in her autobiography. “Bring on anybody! I would stand up to them all with a single polka dot. That was the way I saw it. I was betting everything on this and raising my revolutionary banner against all of history.”(New York Times, August 28)
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“Next they’ll be calling Canada geese ‘Donald ducks,’” said David Hedley, the fourth-generation owner of Hedley Boatyard in Olcott on the shores of Lake Ontario.
“By centering Galliano,” said David Ingber, the senior director for Jewish life and senior director of the Bronfman Center at 92NY and the founding rabbi of the Romemu synagogue, “the Met has put the Jewish community in a no-win position. Either we are blamed for being overly sensitive and not allowing him to be honored or we are complicit. The question is not whether they can do this, but whether they should have.”
“The logo of the Beverly Hills Hotel is in his handwriting, but [architect Paul Williams] couldn’t walk into the front door there,” said LeRonn P. Brooks, who leads the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute. “He even kept his hands in his pockets when walking through construction sites, because he knew some construction workers wouldn’t want to shake his hand.”
“[Renee Richards' playing] didn’t destroy women’s tennis and it didn’t lead to a generation of guys at a later time who couldn’t quite make it in the N.B.A. suddenly playing as women,” Keith Olbermann told a biographer of a trans pioneer and ophthalmologist whom he consulted. “Boy, [people] made an awful big deal out of something that really did take care of itself.” (New York Times, August 30)
