On tour with the Boston Celtics, Auerbach met three of his players, each with an attractive young woman on his arm, in the hotel lobby at five o'clock in the morning. One of the players covered his embarrassment by introducing the young woman as his "cousin." Auerbach nodded politely. The player, desperately trying to make the unlikely tale sound more convincing, continued, "We were just on our way to church."
Auerbach, relating this story on a later occasion, remarked, "I couldn't take that. I fined him twenty-five dollars for insulting my intelligence."

Mann was introduced to an American writer of some note who abased himself before the famous novelist, saying that he scarcely considered himself to be a writer in comparison with Mann. Mann answered him civilly, but afterward he remarked, "He has no right to make himself so small. He's not that big."

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. President Nixon authoritatively acclaimed the event as the greatest since the Creation. Armstrong himself, as he took the last step from the ladder of his lunar module onto the moon's surface, said, "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

NOTE: As Andrew Chaikin details in A Man on the Moon, after the mission, Neil said that he had intended to say 'one small step for a man' and believed that he had done so. However, he also agreed that the 'a' didn't seem to be audible in the recordings. The important point is that the world had no problem understanding his meaning.

In her last few months as First Lady, the Adams' moved into the unfinished White House, a cavernous structure so cold and damp that fires had to be kept lit constantly to make a few rooms habitable. Abigail set up a laundry in the East Room, with clothes lines spanning its vast space. Although her list of problems in the house was a long one, Abigail showed her usual good cheer and refusal to feel sorry for herself.

"I hate to complain...No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches."

In the early days of his career, Gardner churned out stories for pulp magazines at the rate of 200,000 words a month. As he was paid by the word, the length of the story was more important to him than its quality, and he tended to draw the maximum potential from every incident. His villains, for example, were always killed by the last bullet in the gun. Gardner's editor once asked him why his heroes were always so careless with their first five shots. "At three cents a word," replied Gardner, "every time I say bang in the story I get three cents. If you think I'm going to finish the gun battle while my hero has got fifteen cents' worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you're nuts."