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1 " Let’s put to rest one cliché. You can sell refrigerators to Eskimos. The people of Savoonga are Yupiks, the westernmost of the Eskimo tribes, closer to Siberians than American Eskimos in their appearance, and their customs, and their distinctive, liquidly sibilant native language. And, yes, they all have refrigerators. In the winter, food gets freezer burn if left out in the elements. Eskimos need refrigerators to keep their food warm. "
― Gene Weingarten , The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . And Other Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer
2 " Life is essentially a fatal disease of indeterminate duration. "
― Gene Weingarten , One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America
3 " A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which you realize that you are trapped in a world almost entirely devoid of reason. Laughter is how you release the anxiety you feel at this knowledge. "
4 " We are all serving time on death row; only the length of our stay is indeterminate. Dead people, walking. If our lives are to be fulfilling, we must be grateful for the experience alone. "
5 " Karen was effervescent and effortlessly attractive, with a broad, intelligent face under feathered blond hair. (Her hairdresser once observed wryly that other clients paid extravagantly for what nature had casually dropped on Karen—multiple shades of blond in captivating layers.) She was conventionally hot, and a slight chipmunky overbite added a dose of adorable. In the high school band she played the girlie instruments—flute and piccolo—and she could be girl-bossy, like Lucy van Pelt. "
6 " Nature is heartless, people can be cruel, and death and suffering are inevitable and arbitrary. We learn to tame our terror by laughing at the absurdity of it all. By laughing at that recognition, you are rising above it and blunting its power to disturb. "
7 " The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too. "
― Gene Weingarten
