“How are new art forms born?” Questlove (with Ben Greenman), Hip-Hop Is History.

“I am your maid. I’m the one who cleans your hotel room, who enters like a phantom when you’re out gallivanting for the day, no care at all about what you’ve left behind, the mess, or what I might see when you’re gone.” Nita Prose, The Maid.

“You open your eyes at dawn and turn in the cool bedsheets.” Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Abundance.

“People don’t tap their watches anymore; have you noticed?” Anne Tyler, Three Days in June.

“A certain grim but familiar pattern typifies reports from the Holy Land.” Oren Kessler, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict.

“The phone rang. Again. It was the fourth time in eight minutes.” Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf.

“It is twenty minutes past midnight on the morning of Wednesday, May 7, 1986, and the Senate Finance Committee has been working almost nonstop since early the previous morning.” Jeffrey H. Birnbaum & Alan S. Murray, Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform.

“When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me.” J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country.

“In the beginning the door was open. The Founding Fathers celebrated the multiplicity of difference in their young republic and recognized that filling the country’s vast, open spaces with newcomers was necessary for securing its future.” Michael Luo, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America.

“Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human.” Fredrik Backman, My Friends.

“If you stand outside the wall, it is impossible to gauge the size of the city.” Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age.

“The heat moved like a feral thing through the streets, fetid and inescapable.” Tim Mason, The Darwin Affair.

“The first time that history’s greatest fraudster contacted me was in January 2011, a month after his eldest son, Mark, hung himself from his dog’s leash on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.” Richard Behar, Madoff: The Final Word.