“Everyone else is so calm, and everyone’s working or researching or something. It’s almost like a movie set, and I have to pretend I’m working, too. Everyone should have a library card. It’s like a bicycle but for your brain.” - The New York Times
“One of a select band of writers from any discipline to earn his own adjective – ‘Stoppardian’ – in the Oxford English Dictionary, he delighted in the most improbable juxtapositions.” He also shared a co-writing Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. - The Guardian (UK)
Carl Rollyson: “After writing three biographies of Sylvia Plath, what more could I possibly say about her suicide? Yet … in Plath’s case, (there are) very different circumstances that separate her suicide attempt in 1953 from her second, fatal one nearly a decade later.” - The Hedgehog Review
“Thomas King, … the writer of books including 2003's The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative and 2012's The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, says he is reeling from recent news that he has no Cherokee ancestry.” - CBC
Vogel and her husband, a postal clerk, "bought thousands of works from future art stars like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd, stashing them in their cramped one-bedroom New York apartment and eventually handing over the entire collection to the National Gallery of Art.” - The New York Times
His powerful voice, authoritative presence and incisive musicianship led him to a major international career including the Met, Covent Garden, and La Scala. He had a 23-year relationship with the Bayreuth Festival, where he took the role of Wotan/the Wanderer in the landmark 1976 Chéreau/Boulez production of the Ring cycle. - Moto Perpetuo
“Two more former employees of the soul music star Smokey Robinson, both male and female, have alleged he sexually assaulted them, which he denies. Robinson is already facing similar allegations from four other former employees, who filed a ($50 million) joint lawsuit in May.” - The Guardian
A veteran who performed at the Metropolitan Opera 106 times and at many other companies, he was known for such challenging roles as Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Parsifal, and Siegmund and Siegfried (at various times) in the Ring cycle, as well as Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Aeneas in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. - OperaWire
He was a guitar-playing folklorist who had run the Country Music Foundation in Nashville for 26 years, when President Clinton nominated him to chair the NEA in 1998. Congressional Republicans had repeatedly cut the agency’s budget following controversies over grantees; Ivey won the lawmakers over, and the NEA grew again. - The New York Times
A "free spirit and nonconformist, often impetuous, the passionate lover of the 19th century left his mark on the Parisian museum from 2008 to 2017 with bold exhibitions." - Le Monde
Franz's “vibrant portrayal of Linda Loman, the wife of the piteous title character in the 1999 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, earned her a Tony Award — and high praise from the playwright.” - The New York Times
In Britain, she was told she’d never succeed because of her race. So she started theatre companies in Jamaica, and also in London. “In her focus on all-Black casts and re-workings of classics, … Ms. Brewster’s motivation was always artistic, she said.” - The New York Times
“So we have to be a bit careful with that word, right? Because I do think words are important. And that word has been overused and applied to all sorts of things.” Q: “Which type of feminist are you?” “The kind that’s interested in equality under the law.” - AP
