[About covering the story of Jamie Reed's work at a pediatric gender clinic in Missouri:] When you break a story and other publications follow it, as… - Bari Weiss

[About the loss of The New York Times as an institution] I will say that I spent months mourning that. It is catastrophic. But there are things in history that have been more catastrophic. And that's the kind of perspective that I'm trying to keep. Because if I spend all day looking at the wreckage, and more than just looking at the wreckage trying desperately to try and shore up something that is so clearly rotten, I would spend my life in grief.

[About cowardice in the leadership of institutions:] What we've seen is that you don't actually need a majority of people inside an institution to agree with these ideas for these ideas to gain force. [You need] a tiny minority and you need cowardice at the top. Cowardice at the top, that is the key ingredient. You need people at the top who are willing to sell out the authority of the institution and the values of the institution that have taken decades, sometimes centuries, to accrue. Basically for the short-term benefit of not being called a bad name.

I am so curious about why certain people feel in their bones how thin the veneer of civilization is, and why other people are so nonchalant about it.