<abstract>Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I've pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I've failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an interest in this book, then I'm happy for you.</abstract> <h>Citations</h> <bq source="Page 14--15" quote-style="none">"No!" screams McKinley or Madison, Kennedy or Lincoln or beet-faced baby Reagan. Looking on, I always want to intervene. "Listen," I'd like to say, "I'm not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won't stop its crying, but at least now it'll be doing it for a good reason.</bq> <bq source="Page 42--43">The people I hung out with in my early twenties were middle class and, at least to our minds, artistic. We'd all turned our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it. No one wanted to call home asking for money, but we all knew that in a punch our parents would come through for us. It was this, more than race, that set apart from Delicia, for how could someone on the bottom rung of the ladder not be outraged by the unfairness of it all?</bq> <bq source="Page 160">[...] It doesn't take many people to muck up a roadside. A devoted handful can do the trick. One of the things I find repeatedly is a plastic Diet Coke bottle containing a meticulously folded Mars bar wrapper. I imagine this is someone's after-work snack and that by putting the wrapper inside the empty bottle, the person feels he's done his bit. And though he <i>has</i> turned two pieces of trash into one, until he learns to keep it in his car, I don't think he's entitled to pat himself on the back. <i>Who are you?</i> I wondered the first and third and fifth time I cam across one of these stuffed bottles. <i>Do you think about the four hundred years it will take for this to decompose, or is this as inconsequential to you as flushing a toilet?</i></bq> <bq source="Page 165--166">It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it. I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpieces" but "Look what <i>I</i> did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!"</bq>