“We can’t do that [have Evita sing from an outdoor balcony as Rachel Zegler did on the West End] in New York," said composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. "I mean, something awful could happen. We have gun laws in Britain.” (New York Times, May 1)
“Google and Meta were already winning [in the online advertising business], and now, with these A.I. tools, they’re now lapping the field,” said Luke Stillman, a Madison and Wall managing director. (New York Times, May 1)
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“But I rarely, if ever, get threats for being gay or for being a woman,” said Dana Nessel, an attorney general who in 2018 became the first openly gay person elected to a statewide office in Michigan. “They have been fast and furious and nearly always about me being Jewish.” (New York Times, May 2)
“It’s exactly what I think the president always wanted, which is, it’s for everybody and art matters,” Williams said Tod Williams, one of the architects who designed Chicago's Obama Center. “Music will matter, reading will matter, play will matter.” (New York Times, May 2)
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“The standard curriculum was a thesis-driven research essay that students completed on their own time outside of class,” said Marc Watkins, who directs the A.I. Institute for Teachers at the University of Mississippi. “That is, unfortunately, gone.” (New York Times, May 2)
“I must have seen ‘Taxi Driver’ 10 times,” said Stephanie Chernikowski who documented the nascent punk rock scene at CBGB and other downtown clubs. “It transformed the city’s sleaze into a ballet of lights and sounds with its brilliant camerawork. The streets became my studio.” (New York Times, May 2)
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“It’s a huge mess,” said Lionel Rainey III, a Republican strategist in Louisiana, referring to the cancellation of House primary elections in Louisiana as a result of a Supreme Court decision last week overturning part of the Voting Rights Act. “It’s a nightmare scenario for election officials, and there is going to be unquestionably mass confusion at the polls.” (New York Times, May 4)
“You’ll see a patient in consultation who has been parked on a medication which seems to be ineffective for years, and you’ll ask, ‘Why are you still on this medicine?’” said Dr. Joseph F. Goldberg, a past president of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology, which convened a group of 45 psychiatrists to agree on basic principles for “deprescribing,” as supervised drug tapering is sometimes called. “We’ve got a bugaboo going about passive re-prescribing, and I hope we’ll see much less of that.” (New York Times, May 4)
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“If a slave ship docked today in Mombasa with a banner saying, ‘Slaves required in the West,’” said Kenyan senator Okoiti Andrew Omtatah, “you would not have space on that ship.” (New York Times, May 5)
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“Donald Trump has ruled the Republican Party and the Republican base, and he obviously continues to do so,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster after five Republicans opposed to redistricting lost state state races to primary candidates endorsed by the President. “While MAGA influencers and elites may have broken with the president on the war, MAGA Republicans are 100 percent, or maybe 90 percent, behind it.” (New York Times, May 7)
“It’s OK to think of [Tik Tok & Instagram] as the Doritos or Oreos of digital content and just say, ‘I’m an adult, I don’t need this stuff,’” said Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University. (New York Times, May 7)
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“We’re absolutely underestimating wellness influencers,” said Mariah Wellman, who studies digital wellness communities at Michigan State University. “They no longer just shape what we buy or wear,” she said, but also “influence our lifestyle choices, what we put in our bodies.” (New York Times, May 10)
“Embracing veterans was a brilliant political move that erased the liberal-left coding that psychedelics have had since the 1960s,” said Michael Pollan, whose 2018 book on the resurgence of psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind, helped catalyze mainstream acceptance of the drugs. (New York Times, May 10)
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread,” wrote Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor in his memoir, Man's Search for Meaning. “They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (New York Times, May 10)
“Ted [Turner] bought MGM so he could own Gone With the Wind,’” Jane Fonda said of her husband in 2020. “I mean, Gone With the Wind — he lives by that. ‘The land is the only thing that matters, Scarlett. The land is the only thing that lasts!’ That’s why he owns two million acres, because of Scarlett O’Hara.” (New York Times, May 10)
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“The traditional way tech executives operate is to insulate themselves from being perceived as ordinary people by building huge armies of minders, public relations staff and organizational processes to create a wholly manufactured image,” said Dex Hunter-Torricke, the founder of the Center for Tomorrow, a nonprofit addressing societal issues that could arise from A.I. “The moment you have the opportunity to pull back the curtain, Wizard of Oz style, shows how these people really are just human beings.” (New York Times, May 12)
“Before Trump, you could be really surprised by something you saw in the news about a politician,” said Pat Dennis, the head of American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research firm. “After Trump, everything is kind of boring in comparison, compared to the level of scandal.” (New York Times, May 12)
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“Trump seems to think he can charm Xi Jinping,” said Melanie Hart, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. “But Xi is not a relationship guy. Xi really looks at the United States as China’s main rival at a systemic level. Trump really wants Xi Jinping to like him, and Xi couldn’t care less.” (New York Times, May 14)
“Froggy-eyed, lipstick-slashed or glowing like a Tiffany lamp, [Bette Davis] is exciting enough, even when photographed through gauze, to make the latest youth idols about as interesting as a withered logarithm,” wrote movie critic Rex Reed in 1968. (New York Times, May 14)
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“I used ‘hopped up,’ meaning high on drugs. The A.I. wanted me to use ‘sedated,’” said novelist and playwright Ishmael Reed. “It seems intolerant of idioms.” (New York Times, May 14)
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“For the first time in the history of the Great City of New York, its Mayor names and remembers the Nakba,” Asad Dandia, an ally of Zohran Mamdani’s who was recently named the official historian of Brooklyn, wrote on social media. “And I get to be alive to see it.” (New York Times, May 17)
“I think A.I. is a false mirror,” said Drew Lichtenberg, the dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. “It reflects back answers to black-or-white questions, but it does little to help explain the human experience the way art or philosophy can.” (New York Times, May 17)
“For students and parents, the best defense today is to be broadly educated so they can adapt to the changes coming,” counsels Reed Hastings, a Netflix founder. “A.I. is better at rational thinking than it is at emotional depth. The last job that A.I. will get is stand-up comedian.” (New York Times, May 17)
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“If ‘Bangaranga’ can be the song that makes someone in Manchester or Edinburgh or Brighton pull out their phone and look up Bulgaria — look up its music, its coast, its literature, its people — then I’ve already achieved something real,” said Dara who won the 2026 Eurovision contest. (New York Times, May 19)
“What China wants is for the China-U.S. relationship to be good and stable, but with the condition that China says, ‘I am the one providing the path and I am the one pointing the way,” said Shen Dingli, an international relations scholar in Shanghai. (New York Times, May 19)
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“Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail, and it’s over a gorge,” Steve Molo, the lead attorney for Elon Musk, instructed jurors in a lawsuit against OpenAI, which Musk lost on technical grounds. “There’s a river that’s 100 feet below, and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, ‘Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.’ Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would.” (New York Times, May 20)
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“Not only do the three most infamous previous presidency financial-political scandals seem minor compared to Trump’s,” said Barbara A. Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, “but none of the three presidents — Grant, Harding, Nixon — padded their own bank accounts.” (New York Times, May 22)
* * * * *
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”
“Is it possible on May 21, 2026, Republicans finally found an ethical bridge too far?” asked Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. “I wonder: Could it have been that golden ballroom for a billion bucks that was supposed to be freebie that Mar-a-Lago golf buddies were going to pitch in for? Or perhaps it was this incredible slush fund — I don’t know quite what to call it — it was a Capitol Police Cop Beaters Relief Fund?” (New York Times, May 23)
“We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue,” said Pope Leo XIV in response to a question about Catholic priests blessing gay couples. (New York Times, May 23)
* * * * *
“A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life,” Carlo Petrini wrote in Slow Food’s founding manifesto. “May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.” (New York Times, May 26)
“I’m sick of the politics,” said Tse Levy, 59, who does not support boycotting Israeli products at the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn. “I want to get politics out of the co-op — we should be exchanging recipes.” (New York Times, May 26)
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“At key moments in history, the Church is called to decipher the ‘new things’ in the light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human being,” Pope Leo XIV said upon the release of Magnifica Humanitas, a landmark encyclical addressing artificial intelligence. “Today we find ourselves facing a transformation of similar magnitude, with perhaps even greater consequences." (New York Times, May 27)
“People are matter-of-factly saying that they are looking to build a machine God,” said Rayan Krishnan, the chief executive of Vals AI, a San Francisco company that tracks the performance of the latest A.I. technologies. “They are not saying that ironically or in jest. They are saying it as a matter of fact.” (New York Times, May 27)
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“The Nepali people feel very proud of having been independent for centuries, not being colonized ever,” said Jaya Raj Acharya, a retired diplomat who served as Nepal’s ambassador to the United Nations. “This sense of national identity unites us, even though we are today speaking 123 languages in a country that is about the size of New York State.” (New York Times, May 28)
“West Point cadets are already, by definition, smart, tough and patriotic,” said Judge Cathy Seibel of U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y. in a ruling that upheld the free speech rights of a professor. “They are not snowflakes who will somehow be harmed by learning about controversial issues or competing viewpoints. They will not somehow be weakened in their future defense of our country if their classroom discussions are robust and open.” (New York Times, May 28)
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“I commend anybody who handles or catches a snake that does not include bashing it on the head with a shovel,” said Dr. Sara Ruane, 44, the associate curator of herpetology at the Field Museum in Chicago after viewing video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. picking up two nonvenomous black racer snakes on a patio in Palm Beach. “I am very pleased to see somebody not having a major panic attack . . . I don’t know that I’d say it’s the best snake wrangling I have ever seen, but it is far from the worst,” she continued. (New York Times, May 31)
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