Intermediate, List 11

Though a bit uninspired, one of the book’s primary messages is that magic can be found in the everyday, the seemingly banal or benign, the here and now.

That cataclysm might kill millions of people, but it would not be large enough to cause widespread mass extinctions.

A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand.

"What happens is, I'm pretty equable and pretty much the same most of the time," he says with a shrug.

One argument mathematicians cite for not writing for a larger audience is the esoteric nature of their work.

He knew he couldn't tell stories, that he always included extraneous details and tangents that interested only him.

Not only is this data point inaccurate, but it also reflects a deeply disturbing, racist worldview that harms minority men and is based on fallacious logic and inaccurate data.

Kaz had done his best to teach her, but she didn’t quite have his way with breaking and entering, and it took her a few tries to finesse the lock.

He could tell that one was larger than the other; a mother, probably, teaching her fledgling how to hunt.

Consider “children of the Depression,” who learned frugality or who scrap to keep every possession — even after it loses its value — because they “grew up with nothing.”

He who was too gregarious, who spoke too much and too ardently desired the company of others, their conversation and their laughter, did not have what life required.

You've probably experienced this too as a journalist, but in some weird way, the deeper you immerse yourself in something, you become inured; after you've looked at 20 grisly pictures, the 21st isn't as bad.

Race is a social construct, mainly used to establish invidious hierarchies and scapegoats.

Beginning in Spain and ending in Romania, the itinerary uses four ships to visit 12 countries including Portugal, France, Germany and Hungary, stringing together its most popular routes.

Futility, doom, became a smell in the air, pervasive and acrid as the dead smell after a forest fire—my scent and the world’s, the scent of trees, rocks, waterways wherever I went.

However, he rebels against their venality, immorality and general corruption and pays a terrible price for his decency and probity.

If mental effort and ability were a simple matter of available glucose, then the children who exercised—and burnt up more energy—should have performed worse than their quiescent peers.

Tillie confided to her lawyer that she wanted to prevent Morrison from inheriting her estate and to rescind his guardianship of her children.

First, Tenebrion’s a nasty place, of course, and the goblins live in utter squalor, filth, and poverty.

His strictures against the other great European tyrant of the period, Josef Stalin, are softer than those against Hitler.