Quotes from Mary Pilon

Banning sports is a ludicrous proposition.

One of sports journalism's great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.

Most major races, including the New York City Marathon, require runners to provide photo identification when picking up a bib. Most provide bibs only a few days before the race, shortening the window in which someone could copy a bib.

For generations, minor-league baseball has been seen as the scrappier, sometimes seedier, counterpart to its big-league sibling. Games are often cloaked in strange and sometimes awkward theme nights. Some of the mascots are ragged or downright bizarre. The ballparks are smaller and filled with fewer fans.

For professional athletes, the motives for cheating generally are more obvious: money, fame, and often a low likelihood of being caught. But why would a middle- or back-of-the-pack runner lie or cheat in a race that doesn't even matter?

When George Hirsch ran the New York City Marathon in 1976, the first year the course snaked through all five boroughs, the event was a lean affair. He and two thousand others dodged wayward bicycles and pedestrians on the streets, with little help from an anemic police presence.

No one in my family was a journalist, and it didn't seem like a real job. Part of me still doesn't think it is.

I'm a realist about who really reads books and who acts like they read books.

I've often wondered if the trade-off for growing up in the relative newness and freshness of the West Coast was befuddlement when it comes to historical preservation. We don't have many old things, and we don't really know what to do with the few that are around when our default response is to compost or field burn.

'Power breaking,' also called Hanmadang - which means something like celebration or festival in Korean - involves breaking large amounts of wood, concrete, granite, and the like with specific hand and foot techniques. Practitioners rely on repeated resistance training and the idea that, over time, the body can adapt to stress.

It's still thrilling, even if my work is something that people even pretend they're interested in on a first date or at a cocktail party.

The fitness industry has long thrived off the well-intended coming through their doors and signing up with dreams of self-improvement, only to fade into their couches. Those who stick with it often feel like hamsters on treadmills.

I'm astonished at how quickly the Great Recession came and went.

Recognizing chronic sadness may encourage someone to reach out to a friend, family member, or counselor rather than concealing the distress.

If workplaces that enlist happiness consultants really care about worker satisfaction, why not offer better maternity and paternity policies? Daycare options? They could advise managers to stop calling workers to come in on weekends or expect them to answer emails late on weeknights.

While most American labor unions have struggled for the past several decades, professional baseball players comprise one of the strongest packs of organized workers in the world.

Throughout the Great Recession of 2008, the average 401(k) balance lost anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of value. Nobody was more harmed than baby boomers or recent retirees, who, unlike younger workers, didn't have the time for the market to rebound or were no longer contributing and therefore unable to invest when stocks were cheap.

Endnotes, often confused with footnotes that live at the bottom of a page, is that lump of text at the end of the book, sometimes even relegated to a tiny font size. They're often forgotten but, in nonfiction, particularly history books, can offer a fascinating footprint into the author's research, a joyful, geeky abyss.

Money can be a reflection of our perceptions of power, self-esteem, personal history, fears, and happiness.

Historically, companies haven't hesitated to end their relationships with professional athletes amid scandals.

As the U.S. prison population has surged over the decades, the legal profession's distaste for former inmates has become more conspicuous. And it isn't only law. Medical schools often have committees to evaluate cases and mitigating factors but are generally reluctant to admit ex-inmates.

Women in finance bore the brunt of layoffs more than their male counterparts during the Great Recession in 2008 and were also more likely to have been in back office jobs that were replaced by computers.

Increasingly, football fans are arguing that the game is bloated with too much down time. The officiating is clumsy.

With a smartphone in tow and a playlist humming, a runner may miss the crunch of leaves underfoot, the enthusiastic cheers of benevolent strangers, or even her own breath. And, for many runners, leaving the mobile device at home is the most liberating part of the sport.