et cetera

Details from a photo of Barbara Epstein released by the New York Review of Books with her obituary.

From the entrance exam for Chinese civil servants (via Harper’s).

8. Often, when a thing is just begun, it is impossible to know how it will end, much less whether society will acknowledge it. If you want success you must make every possible effort, you must keep a cool head and resist anxiety. If you work [...]

To lie in wait, patiently observing, watching, breathing, and then, as soon as the man reveals his position, shooting him in the head: it’s not exactly what a writer does, but it’s not so dissimilar.

Keith Gessen, “Under Siege”, in The New Yorker, 3 June 2006.