Photo: Philip Montgomery

"The immediate pleasure of Berlant’s act lies in physical comedy as virtuosic as Robin Williams’s or Jim Carrey’s, at once slapstick and surgically precise. Her neck alone can elongate her strong features into an ingénue’s one second and nestle her shoulders up to her chin, hag-like, the next."

Photo: Norm Diamond

"At each sale, my eyes would trace the piles slowly: all the Christmas decorations, a dusty juicer sitting like a cat in the sun. The houses tended to be nice, but not so nice that I wished I lived there. An estate sale brings out the facts of living that are true for people of any income bracket: paper plates and tennis shoes multiply like rabbits. White furniture always grows brownish over time."

Photo: Maegan Gindi

"Wyn is articulate, earnest, and upbeat, with pale skin and reddish-brown hair (she changes hairstyles frequently). She is the kind of person who cracks self-deprecating jokes about how much she loves anime. She knew how it sounded when she described being out of her own body, inhabited by others. She also knew she wasn’t faking how she felt."

Photo: Cait Oppermann

"...I couldn’t help noticing the ubiquity of sarcasm among elite gymnastics coaches — a kind of double-edged tonal default that could flicker as quickly toward tension-diffusing humor as it could toward flippant cruelty. “So you’re getting serious about your gymnastics, huh?” a staff member for the national team called out to a 15-year-old junior elite gymnast, moments into a challenging uneven bar routine that I watched at a training camp last year."

T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, 'Kindred'. 2019, found fabric, canvas, stuffing, thread. Courtesy of the artist.

"During periods of wakefulness, phones offered precious distraction, and Lala didn’t like to let the battery dip past 20 percent. She had accidentally paid for a Hulu subscription, so while they rode she watched movies or scrolled through Facebook, looking at pictures of hairdos and limited-edition food: Cap’n Crunch ice cream, Sour Patch Toll House cookies, a four-pack of bright-red Seagram’s Escapes."

Mike Birbiglia and Roy Wood, Jr., on the Instagram Live show “Tip Your Waitstaff”

"Comedians often run or bounce jokes on the sidelines of clubs or over the phone, testing the potential of jokey premises, vague ideas, and personal anecdotes. It’s a trusting process, exposing at once how comics talk to each other about their craft and think about jokes at their dimmest stage."

Photo: Andrew D. Wagner

"When he first heard about the discipline, he was ‘‘confused,’’ he told me. ‘‘I thought, you know, you just kiss the kiss.’’ After being cast in the production, ‘‘I thought I would be comfortable with it,’’ he said. It wasn’t until he was standing there in front of Wilson that he realized he had no idea what to do with his hands."

Illustration: João Fazenda

"Bamford was wearing a velour sweater and big sparkly earrings, her blond hair streaked with pink highlights. Because of the medications she takes, she has a tremor. (“Weakness is the brand!” she shouted during her show the next evening, holding out her quivering fingers.)"

Photo: Brenda Ann Kenneally

"Vogue femme can be performed in the “soft” style, which is flowy and sensuous, or in-your-face “dramatics.” The former is languid and catlike — in the charged environment of a ball, it can look almost casual. Voguers dip to the ground as if melting, stroking their skin to emphasize feminine softness. In dramatics, performers stalk the stage, whipping their hair and kicking their feet up to give each dip velocity."

A makeshift memorial for the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victims (Mark Wilson/Getty)

"Nearly every profile subject had been anticipating an important life milestone or had just soared passed one. Childhood is full of accomplishments, and during their research, the reporters invariably uncovered imminent graduations or big birthdays. The students felt the significance of these markers acutely, since they, too, were experiencing their own graduation ceremonies or first after-school jobs. Hahamy said she would often think to herself that the children she wrote about “should be living the life that I’m living right now.”"

Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano. Photograph from Alamy.

"Carmela’s daily encounters with marital and parental frustration are made sharper by the painful knowledge that, no matter what, she is trapped in a state of moral compromise. She is committed to her family, but her discomfort with her situation, because she habitually represses it, emerges at inopportune times."

Photo: Paula Court

"Last December, while Winner was awaiting trial (she eventually pleaded guilty), the playwright Tina Satter discovered the transcript of Winner’s interrogation, which the F.B.I. had released, in court filings, a few months before. She began reading and couldn’t put it down. “I had never read anything like that,” Satter told me. “Literally, I was, like, ‘This is a play.’”"

Gianni Pettena, Architecture Ondoyante (Sketch for 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine Metz). Courtesy the artist.

"People with appalling habits were interesting, at least. And being around them made me feel observant, as though their eccentricity made them readable, although of course it did not — it just made them easier to reduce to type. When I first encountered “characters,” I was delighted: the anti-anxiety prescriptions poking out of the pockets of fur coats were like movies I’d seen coming to life. But on the whole — of course — my clients were more complicated than that, and more ordinary."