On some level, my life has been wasted on me. After all, if I can’t remember it, who can?

The New Yorker arrived by mail every week. Along with the Sunday New York Times and The Saturday Review of Literature, it was required reading for the diaspora of smart people living in Hollywood; reading it made them feel they hadn’t lost a step, that they could move back east at a moment’s notice.

the informational cascade, which turns out to be something that’s repeated so many times that it becomes true even though it isn’t.