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One must admire Mrs. Kennedy for the skill with which she deployed these images in the difficult aftermath of her husband’s death. Our retrospective view of President Kennedy is now filtered through the legends and symbols she put forward at that time. The hardheaded politician devoted to step-by- step progress was transformed in death into the consummate liberal idealist.

How Jackie Kennedy Invented the Camelot Legend. By James Pierson. The Daily Beast, November 12 2013. 

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During this time a number of the inmates of the house had gathered around us... "Poor loon!" they said. "Why, she's crazy enough!" "I am afraid to stay with such a crazy being in house." "She will murder us all before morning." One woman was for sending for a policeman to take me at once. They were all in a terrible and real state of fright.

Ten Days in a Mad-House. By Nellie Bly. The New York World [defunct]. 1887. 

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Ravi: I said we were just messing around with the camera. He told me he wanted to have a friend over and I didn’t realize they wanted to be all private.

Wei: Omg dharun why didnt u talk to me first i told them everything

The Story of a Suicide: Two college roommates, a webcam, and a tragedy. By Ian Parker. The New Yorker, February 6 2012. 

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Interviewer: What happened when you reached the front? Vonnegut: I imitated various war movies I'd seen.

Kurt Vonnegut: The Art of Fiction No. 64. Interviewed by David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, & Richard Rhodes. The Paris Review 1977. 

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Juniper's eyes were just starting to open after being fused shut for so long. Now she opened them wide and looked right at her.

The doctor saw a baby who was almost a month old and not yet 2 pounds, whose body was shutting down, who was sedated and groggy and in so much pain, but was fighting to engage with the world. Her eyes were opening and closing. Opening and closing. Dr. Shakeel felt her saying, I'm here. I'm here.

Juniper French was declaring herself.

 Never Let Go. By Kelley Benham. Tampa Bay Times, 2012. 

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We reminded Edie of a beautiful girl whose picture ran 30 years ago in The Social Spectator, Little Edie Beale at the East Hampton Fair. “I hate it when people say I was beautiful in the old days,” she grimaced. “I want to detach myself from the past! Do you understand? I like to think I’m good now. I’m terrific now!” But what does she do here for twelve hours of every day? We asked the second lady of Grey Gardens. “I wake up and write poetry, like other people have coffee. I love the late movies on TV.”

The Secret of Grey Gardens. By Gail Sheehy. New York Magazine, January 10 1972. 

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Like almost every other anatomist of his time, Stieve was never professionally penalized or prosecuted for conducting research on the corpses of murdered prisoners...Stieve’s obituaries didn’t describe his negotiations with Plötzensee Prison over the timing of executions to ensure the daily delivery of fresh bodies. They lauded him as a highly respected scientist who loved hunting and mountaineering.

The Nazi Anatomists. By Emily Bazelon. Slate, November 6 2013. 

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"It's about freedom," he says. "What else can happen to us after this? You can fuck whoever you want, fuck as much as you want, and nothing worse can happen to you. Nothing bad can happen after you get HIV."

In Search of Death. By Gregory A. Freeman. Rolling Stone, January 3 2003. 

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Both Thiele and Wynn recall that they, Pou and the other nurses covered the bodies of the dead and carried them into the chapel, filling it. Thiele said the remaining bodies were wrapped in sheets and placed on the floor in the corridor and in a nearby room.

“It was very respectful,” Thiele told me. “It’s not like you would think.”

The Deadly Choices at Memorial. By Sheri Fink. The New York Times, August 25 2009. 

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During a Chaucer lecture the next semester I lost the ability to discern the boundaries between spoken words. Professor F. opened his mouth and out flowed slushy streams of sonic nonsense with no meter, no structure, no definition.

Lost in the Meritocracy: How I traded an education for a ticket to the ruling class. By Walter Kirn. The Atlantic, January 1 2005. 

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She was painfully aware that her attempts at self-cure—treating human relations as homework—only seemed to crystallize her alienation, and in the summer after her freshman year she wrote a letter to a stranger at the law school. She begins by explaining that she had picked the name out of the phone book, that she was a freshman at Harvard College, and that she was from Ethiopia. It is an astonishing document:

Why am I writing this letter? Because I am desperate…As far as I can remember, my life has been hellish...Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier.

Diary of a Murder. By Melanie Thernstrom. The New Yorker, June 3 1996. 

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When Sweetman posted the review Ella was asleep in Paris, having just played ‘Royals’ on French television. She messaged me the following morning. “I read it, and then looked at the Arc de Triomphe from the window of my hotel room, and felt nothing at all.”

Lorde: Pop’s New Ruler. By Duncan Greive. Faster Louder 2013. 

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When Stacy was on the stand, Jackson grilled her about the “significance” of Willingham’s “very large tattoo of a skull, encircled by some kind of a serpent.”

“It’s just a tattoo,” Stacy responded.

“He just likes skulls and snakes. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. He just had—he got a tattoo on him.”

Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man? By David Grann. The New Yorker, September 7 2009.