She has to go to the bathroom.  For reasons obscure to me, this is presented as the decisive proof of hypocrisy[.]

A prig is one who delights in demonstrating his superiority on small occasions, and it is precisely when he has a good case that he rises to the depths of prigocity.

I imagine myself visiting Ethiopian restaurants and thundering: “I am a lover of the world’s foods!  I am a deeply serious eater!  If you can’t even make food that I would like, then who do you expect will eat this?”

Botstein’s prolixity does not preclude conversational generosity: he compulsively credits you with making good points that were in fact his.

What got the adrenaline going was the sense of urgency he felt when I’d asked him about verse-speaking, about the “iambic fundamentalism” for which he’s famous.

We ministers of the nether world, from the highest down to the lowest, all have unbending iron natures and – unlike the officials of the mortal world, who are always doing kindnesses and showing favours and inventing little tricks and dodges for frustrating the court of justice – we are incapable of showing partiality.

In his later years, his sense of humour blooms into a quaint richness that pleases everyone, but is without any malice.

“To arrive at this parallel,” Werstine says, “Chambers had to equate a creature’s eating itself, which is hardly cannibalism in any sense of the word, to its eating another member of its own species.”

Content note: This event is designed to provoke existential terror and involves staring into the abyss.

There is no base score assigned to owning a mouse or washing a mouse that can confer an automatic rating of fit or unfit for duty.