"Find extremists and hot-heads of the lowest common denominator variety, seed them with weaponry only a few militaries in the world possess - and, well, just see what happens. What could go wrong?"

"Civilian items, medical stuff, towels, toilet paper." 

"After Hamas transferred authority to a government of pro-Western technocrats, life in Gaza became worse."

"'How does that make me a security risk?' 'Because you are coming to Israel and trying to change it and make it free from racism.'"

"I stand by myself in the kitchen, but I have two companions. My bad mood. And my wife's grace."

"'Black Dan Gilberts,' he called them."

"In Chicago, there were [seven] people shot outside of a laundromat, and no one uses the term 'mass shooting.'"

"There was nothing beautiful about their poverty."

"If we reduce On the Waterfront to Kazan’s personal story, we lose sight of the real working class out of which this film was born."

"The almond-milk industry is selling you a jug of filtered water clouded by a handful of ground almonds."

"It turns out tanks and bombers spread a language much more effectively than the promise of regular verbs."

"I doubt my teacher had any idea what the passage was about, and the lit-crit we read as 'secondary sources' disdained anything as straightforward as explaining what the play was supposed to mean or how the poet used dramatic techniques to express that meaning."

"After the prayer, give M&Ms to everyone except that kid."

Steve Thorngate

The Century managing editor is also a church musician and songwriter.

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