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[...] there is indeed about the Stadium crowd down here something indefinable that strongly suggests Connecticut license plates and very green lawns. In sum, the socioeconomic aura here for the day's headline match is one of management rather than labor.
[...] there are just as many furtive-looking parties standing at the edges asking whether anyone passing by has an extra ticket for sale, or would like perhaps to sell their own, as there aer scalpers. The scalpers and weird people asking to be scalped seem not even to notice one another, all of them calling softly at once, and this makes the last pre-Gate stretch of the promenade kind of surreally sad, a study in missed connection.
footnote 21
[...] Deep down, we all know that the real allure of sexuality has about as much to do with copulation as the appeal of food does with metabolic combustion. Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, to erect bridges about the chasms that separate selves. Sexuality is, finally, about imagination. [...]
[...] one John Connor; and but that apparently the Resistance itself somehow gets one-time-only access to Skynet's time-travel technology [...]
[...] you're terrified to spend any time on anything other than working on it because if you look away for a second you'll lose it, dooming the whole infant to continued hideousness. And but so you love the damaged infant and pity it and care for it [...]
on writing a book being like having a hideous infant following you around
[...] the discovery that disciplined fun is more fun than impulsive or hedonistic fun. [...] writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself an illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth of instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.
[...] Since it does nothing that good old use doesn't do, its extra letters and syllables don't make a writer seem smarter; rather, using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she'll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for house, for presently, at present, at this time, and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What's worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: "formal writing" does not mean gratutiously fancy writing; it means clear, clear, maximally considerate writing.
[...] if is used to express a conditional, whether to introduce alternative possibilities. [...] If you can coherently insert an "[or not]" after either the conjunction or the clause it introduces, you need whether. Examples: "He didn't know whether [or not] it would rain"; "She asked me straight out whether I was a fetishist [or not]"; "We told him to call if [or not? no] he needed a ride [or not? no]." [...]
[...] A subordinating conjunction signals the reader that the clause it's part of is dependent--common sub. conjunctions include before, after, while, unless, if, as, and because. The relevant rule is easy and well worth remembering: Use a comma after the subordinating conjunction's clause only if that clause comes before the independent clause that completes the thought; if the sub. conj.'s clause comes after the independent clause, there's no comma. Example: "If I were you, I'd put down the hatchet" vs. "I'd put down that hatchet if I were you."
[...] If there needs to be a comma before the rel. pron., you need which; otherwise, you need that. Examples: "We have a massive SUV that we purchased on credit last month"; "The massive SUV, which we purchased on credit last month, seats us ten feet above any other driver on the road." [...]