Quotes from Daniel Okrent

one man used a portable forge to heat rivets to the glowing point, pulled each one from the fire with tongs and threw it across open space to a crewmember who would catch the burning metal in a can.

Photographer William Leftwich was rewarded for his nervy visit to the uppermost reaches of the RCA's steel frame when two workers standing fifteen feet apart on a single beam began to toss a football back and forth.

Until 1868 there wasn't a single school of architecture in the United States, and the conventional apprentice system proved of little utility when the first skyscrapers

Art is one of the great resources of my life," Abby had written the year before. "I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subject it represents.

At the Beaux-Arts he was that most admired of students, "a second-place man." First place in academic competitions belonged to the highly capable and absolutely conventional; the truly brilliant, whose innovative work made the masters at the Ecole uneasy, learned to be content with second.

The only ill-chosen word in that sentence was "quasi.

whose four-story limestone mansion at 12 West 49th was sufficient for himself and his wife, while the neighboring houses at numbers 10 and 14 provided him with protection against development from the east and, to his west, a place to store his books and paintings.

That first week, I also went to Washington. That was really tough. I sympathize with those Washington figures who have to face 40 Times Washington bureau reporters. They ask hard questions and they're relentless. And they were quite suspicious and quite dubious about me.

I was probably being a little cocky, which I do when I feel that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Right, but there's expertise and then there's inside information. And I think we have to make a distinction.

I believe the Times is a great newspaper, but a profoundly fallible one.

Gail didn't want me commenting on the opinion pages. I was hired by the news department and, despite the rabid assertions of the Times' enemies and detractors, the two really have nothing to do with each other.

That the Op-Ed page is very important in readers' and the nation's perception of the Times, the perception of its editorial positions, and of its implicit editorial positions as expressed by the publisher's choice of people who are given the freedom to write opinion columns.

I'm afraid we'll see reporters stop chasing quotes around the same time dogs stop chasing cars.

Now I worry. If people ended up liking me, did I do the job wrong? So I decided they didn't end up liking me - they ended up being able to deal with me.

I know there are reporters who ridicule pundits.

I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.

I think on civilian casualties they could do more. It's actually something I've discussed with the editors involved. They're aware of it, and I'm hopeful that there will be more reporting on that.

If you really hate George Bush, you don't want to read about his hobbies or that he's nice to his friends or that he's good company at dinner.

The Times' new credibility committee report that was issued on Monday very specifically said they will be putting in a policy that reporters must get permission from their department heads to appear on television, which I think is a really good thing.

Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.

It's a very complicated issue about when is a fact not a fact in the context of opinions.

I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean.

If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better.