“The top of the medicine packet didn’t give, but the edge julienned his fingers like Julia Childs over a pair of carrots.”

“Civil rights remain a movement, and that movement is more at risk now than any time in a generation. Diversity and inclusion have been declared illegal.”

“On Dec. 2, 1943, USS LCT-242 was sunk by a circling torpedo off Naples, Italy. In a little more than a year of service, she earned two battle stars. She was a Memphis girl.”

“It’s the city, man,” the band’s leader, Ollie Liddell, answered when asked where that joy comes from, “the soul.”

“Like a .30-06 Springfield with a buck in the sights, the curricula in our schools have become a target, and our history has become fair game.”

“We cannot escape our responsibility to our place in history any more than a fire can burn down what happened at Clayborn Temple.”

“As you read this, I’m headed east on Interstate 40 to a reading and book signing of ‘Never Over The Hill,’ a memoir I coauthored with Bill Haltom about our time in college.”

“Should you like to play a King-Collins course, still rare but growing in number, there’s one right smack dab in the middle of your city.”

“Whatever happens next, however ill-conceived, will largely be the result of the hubris and selfishness of the majority of that school board, and the losers will be our city’s kids and our tomorrow.”

“If the drive-in was mine, what would I do with it?"

And the photo fell away, while the magnet crashed to the floor between my feet, depriving the meerkat of its left ear. There’s something to be said for sloppy, arbitrary, impetuous, and rough around the edges. Right in front of you. You know, like life in the moment.

“We have to get our act together. The city and county mayors need to sit down together for a cup of coffee. Strong coffee. A pot of it.”

“For me, Lent is a time for reflection. The journey so far, the journey at present, and the journey to come. That’s what I feel called to do these 40 days.”

“Even though we were in those same places at the same time, we were not the same. My public pool was in the Fairgrounds; Howard’s was in Orange Mound. At Katz, he’d have his water fountain, and I’d have mine.”

No core principles would be abandoned. In fact, those four would become the most important members of Congress, and their tiny caucus the most impactful in the entire body.

“Numbers are cold, numbers don’t bleed. Numbers don’t silently cry in a waiting room or crumble to the floor when the news arrives. Numbers don’t comfort or explain or justify when a child dies.”

Dan Conaway writes, “We’ve been chosen as the test market for a new men’s cologne just in time for Valentine’s Day: Elon Musk.”

“The morning brings a new day, like the one before never happened, but like all the days before, what happened is baked in old slave-made brick, and immigrant-laid stone, and preserved.”

“Every vote for vouchers takes tax money, your money, from already underfunded public schools and gives it to private schools.”

“Brent Taylor would use his elected office — voted on by about 20% of the county — to remove a county official elected by 100% of the county voters.”

“Aside from the obvious point that we could all suggest better than we’re going to get, the larger point is that we’re all going to need each other as things shake out in Washington.”

In his opinion piece, Dan Conaway says that if you vote for Donald Trump, whatever he does will be with your permission.

“If you see me talking to myself, just move along. I’m self-employed; we’re having a staff meeting.”

Tennessee’s Republican leadership maintains that cities and counties can’t have different state laws, but what did they do when it came to new, suburban school districts and school vouchers? 

“The truth is that no one is asking the people that have lost everything whether or not they are Republican or Democrat before they help them, no more than those two walkers on the beach asked me.”