Who should read this post: Anybody looking for ideas on an essay about a quote. You should also check out my last post on Writing About a Quote for Princeton, which introduces how to use an essay or a quote from an essay.
For those of you who read my post on using an essay for . . . an essay about a quote, and want more, below I have additional links to excellent writers and essays, good for quoting and good for ideas about how to write an essay that is interesting or even brilliant.
These links are centered on two long-standing magazines that are famous for featuring quality essays. Short descriptions and author links will help you choose, or just click on everything, and keep clicking until you find an essay, or a quote . . . that clicks.
One the one hand, these essays may provide a quote for you to use. On the other hand, you will find nothing but great writing in these links, which carries its own lessons about how to construct an essay, even if you do not use a specific essay for a quote.
Author and essay links
Atlantic—One of America’s Great, long-running magazines on culture, politics, the arts and writing.
A sampling of writers and works
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of The Beautiful Struggle and Between the World and Me.
Coates’ essay on Obama, starting with quote from Gatsby
JJ Gould on culture and language:
Ian Bogost, contributing editor, tech subjects:
Or try this:
How Many Robots Does It Take to Replace a Human Job?—
Key Quote:
Recent studies from McKinsey and the economists Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne estimate that around 45 percent of workers currently perform tasks that could be automated in the near future. And the World Bank estimates that around 57 percent of jobs could be automated within the next 20 years.
For the full essay: Robots. This robot article by Gillian White, Senior Associate Editor
Next up: Ross Anderson, Science topics, very cool stuff for science fans
Essay on Pleistocene Park—kind of like Jurassic Park, just more recent
The World’s Most Urgent Science Project
To know the Earth’s future, you must first know its past.
Matt Thompson, Deputy Editor
Advertising That Exploits Our Deepest Insecurities
Key Quote
The web browser is a dissatisfaction-seeking machine.
Key section
The web browser is a dissatisfaction-seeking machine. Every search query we input reflects a desire—to have, to know, to find. Ordinarily, that fact may escape notice. But there are moments when the machine reveals its inhumanity.
Speaking on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is cohosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s Note to Self, shared a story of a message she received from a listener who’d been following her series on digital privacy. “She was concerned that she might have a drinking problem, and so she went on Google and asked one of those questions, ‘How do you know if you have a drinking problem?’ Two hours later, she goes on Facebook, and she gets an ad for her local liquor store.
“And she left me a voicemail crying, ’cause she was like, ‘You know, it would be one thing if it were even sending me, like, clinics maybe where I could get help. But the fact that that’s how it was targeting me …’ She felt so betrayed by Facebook, this company with whom she had a very intimate relationship.”
Other Interesting Stuff:
New Yorker—Probably the most important general-circulation magazine on culture, arts and politics, with some detours into science, as well as poetry, famous cartoons and restaurants in . . . New York
For example, Mary Karr on high heels
And frankly, all you have to do to find more cool stuff is keep clicking—though quite a bit is behind a paywall, much is also kept up as a public service.
Here is where you can access a list of New Yorker contributors. In two words: Awesome Writers. Click away to find some excellent stuff to learn from or quote from:
List of New Yorker Writers, Linked to Essays