"The obvious precedent for Beijing was the Berlin Olympics, in 1936.  Both were showcases for a muscle-flexing nation, although Hitler made an elementary error when he chose not to dress his young National Socialists in lime-green catsuits laced with twinkling lights."

"[Watching the opening ceremonies, we ask ourselves] what kind of society is it that can afford to make patterns out of its people?"

"I watched the cyclists pass through Tiananmen square, near the start of their road race, and none of them seemed in danger of expiring.  Logic suggested that they zip up the east side of the square, since they were heading that way anyhow, but politics demanded that they take the western route, and then hang a right.  This allowed them to pass in a pretty blur beneath the portrait of Mao Zedong, who, having overseen the deaths of up to seventy million of his countrymen (and having earned a spot on their banknotes for his pain), was more than happy to survey a handful of fat-free Spaniards in red-and-yellow spandex."

"[Thanks to a trusty Olympic guidebook at the water polo match], I was primed to note the fine distinctions between three kinds of foul that can be committed in the course of a game; after a minute, I laid the book aside, having realized that all three were being committed all the time by everybody.  The rules and infringements of this ancient sport are of a solemn complexity, but all are founded on the fundamental desire of one person to treat another as a tea bag.  You find your opposite number, grab him (or her), and dunk, regardless of whether the ball is anywhere in the vicinity; neck-holding is especially popular, involving, as it does, much frantic splashing on the part of the drowner, and the whole exercise looks weirdly like a lifesaving class, except that the motive is reversed."

-----Anthony Lane, excerpts from his New Yorker article, "The Only Games In Town"

Brian Eno sums "it" all up in a few sentences.  I couldn't disagree more, but you're either with him or your against him as a modern.  There are no other alternatives.

"I am an anti-Romantic.  It's part of being an atheist.  It's another version of being an atheist.  It's anti...anti this idea that it's outside of us rather than inside of us.  I think it's all inside of us.  I don't think there's anything else, actually.  It's all in us, and it's all in everyone too."

And then he offers this surprising little reflection, which I quite like.

"What would be really interesting to see [in your film] is how beautiful things grow out of shit.  Because nobody ever believes that.  Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head---they'd somehow appeared there and formed in his head---before he, and all he had to do was write them down and they would kind of be manifest to the world.  But I think what's so interesting, and what would really be a lesson that everybody should learn is that things come out of nothing, things evolve out of nothing.  You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest, and then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing.  And I think this would be important for people to understand, because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that's how things work.  If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted---they have these wonderful things in their head, but you're not one of them, you're just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that---then you live a different kind of life.  You could have another kind of life, where you can say, 'well, I know that things come from nothing very much, and start from unpromising beginnings, and I'm an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.'"

-----Brian Eno, from "Here is What Is" by Daniel Lanois

"How easy it is to live with You, O Lord.
How easy to believe in You.
When my spirit is overwhelmed within me,
When even the keenest see no further than the night,
And know not what to do tomorrow,
You bestow on me the certitude
That You exist and are mindful of me,
That all the paths of righteousness are not barred.
As I ascend in to the hill of earthly glory,
I turn back and gaze, astonished, on the road
That led me here beyond despair,
Where I too may reflect Your radiance upon mankind.
All that I may reflect, You shall accord me,
And appoint others where I shall fail."

-----Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008