Joseph Epstein on the hook shot:

“I shall never forget the afternoon, sometime along about my thirteenth year, when, shooting baskets alone, I came upon the technique for shooting the hook. Although today it has nowhere near the consequence of the jump shot—an innovation that has been to basketball what the jet has been to air travel—the hook is still the single most beautiful shot in the game. The rhythm and grace of it, the sway of the body off the pivot, the release of the ball behind the head and off the fingertips, the touch and instinct involved in its execution, make the hook an altogether balletic thing, and to achieve it is to feel one of the most delectable sensations in sports. That afternoon, on a deserted side street, shooting on a rickety wooden backboard and a black rim without a net, I felt it and grew nearly drunk on the feeling. Rain came down, dirt washed in the gutters, flecks of it spattering my clothes and arms and face, but, soaked and cold though I was, I do not think I would have left that basket on that afternoon for anything. I threw up hook after hook, from every angle, from farther and farther out, off the board, without the board, and hook after hook went in. Only pitch darkness drove me home.”

-JE, Masters of the Game

Nabokov's Speak, Memory:

...shady recesses would then harbor that special boletic reek which makes a Russian's nostrils dilate—a dark, dank, satisfying blend of damp moss, rich earth, rotting leaves.

Boletic=pertaining to, or obtained from the Boletus (a mushroom); boletic acid

Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then—not in dreams—but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

Terry Teachout on liking Art:

As it happens...I’ve changed my mind about art more than once, and in so doing I’ve learned that I not infrequently start by disliking something and end up liking it. Not always—sometimes I decide on close acquaintance that a novel or painting isn’t as good as I’d thought. (I used to like Picasso’s Guernica a lot more than I do now.) More often, though, I realize that it was necessary for me to grow into a fuller understanding of a work of art to which my powers of comprehension were not at first equal. The music critic Hans Keller said something shrewd about this phenomenon: “As soon as I detest something I ask myself why I like it.” 

Toward the end of a long run, I was tottering back to Pioneer Park with a friend, nearly there, when he urged us to stop at a used book sale on Virginia Lane. Just above Parkhill there's a sprawling house at the edge of a little pond, overfrequented by flocks of ducks, where an older fellow, a former used book shop owner, sets out fully-stocked shelves in his garage and laden tables on his gravel driveway. There didn't seem to be all that much to tempt the wallet—Tom Clancy, Nicholas Sparks, faceless bodice-rippers—but I did come across a hardback copy of  Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" for 5 bucks—swell deal—and drove by later to pick it up. Perusing the hodgepodge, I also found IB Singer's "Collected Stories" for 6 dollars. Goes to show that at almost any book sale, there’s usually a diamond in the rough; even two, three, or a dozen or more. In general, it’s worth intermitting the day to stop and take a look, at the obvious risk of piling onto one's already excessive book freight.

On the perils of writing fiction—IB Singer, Collected Stories

In the process of creating [stories], I have become aware of the many dangers that lurk behind the writer of fiction. The worst of them are: 1. The idea that the writer must be a sociologist and a politician, adjusting himself to what are called social dialectics. 2. Greed for money and quick recognition. 3. Forced originality—namely, the illusion that pretentious rhetoric, precious innovations in style, and playing with artificial symbols can express the basic and ever-changing nature of human relations, or reflect the combinations and complications of hereditary and environment. These verbal pitfalls of so-called “experimental” writing have done damage even to genuine talent; they have destroyed much of modern poetry by making it obscure, esoteric, and charmless. Imagination is one thing, and the distortion of what Spinoza called “the order of things” is something else entirely. Literature can very well describe the absurd, but it should never become absurd itself.

Jean Cocteau on Proust: 

A giant miniature, full of mirages, of superimposed gardens, of games conducted between space and time.

Frederic Raphael on Famous Actresses I Have Known

HBO’s Olive Kitteridge is elegant, amusing and quietly (and unquietly) devastating.

Nabokov's Speak, Memory:

"This schismatic mood revealed itself in her healthy distaste for the ritual of the Greek Catholic Church and for its priests. She found a deep appeal in the moral and poetical side of the Gospels, but felt no need to support any dogma. The appalling insecurity of an afterlife and its lack of privacy did not enter her thoughts. Her intense and pure religiousness took the form of her having equal faith in the existence of another world and in the impossibility of comprehending it in terms of earthly life."

Paul Ingrassia, Engines of Change:

"Driving a BMW was like wearing a form-fitting, trim-cut Italian designer suit instead of sturdy but boxy threads from Brooks Brothers. Mercedes gave top priority to big cars, which made its smaller cars feel like cheap versions of the real thing. But BMW's roots lay in small cars. Its bigger models, the 5 series and 7 series, evolved from its small cars, which remained at the core of the company. "Eine Wurst, drei Grosse," the company's engineers would say, meaning, 'one sausage, three sizes.' That wouldn't become an advertising slogan, mercifully, but the point was clear."

Max Ophul's Le Plaisir (1952) based on three lovely stories by Maupassant.

All is Lost is an arresting and beautiful film.

Joseph Epstein on Proust's original English translator, CK Scott Moncrieff

I didn't want a life of having to deal with everybody. Every old woman, every drunk or wife of a drunk, the constant traffic of people which is the priest's work.

—FH Powers, on why he didn't become a priest

Christopher Cadwell on Calvin & Hobbes:

The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described “Calvin and Hobbes” as “our only popular explication of the moral philosophy of Aristotle.” Wilson meant that the social order is founded on self-control and delayed gratification—and that Calvin is hopeless at these things. Calvin thinks that “life should be more like TV” and that he is “destined for greatness” whether he does his homework or not. His favorite sport is “Calvinball,” in which he is entitled to make up the rules as he goes along.

Terry Teachout on Peggy Lee

Her sultry version of "Fever."