"The creative brainchild of Aldo Leopold, Roald Dahl and a skilled plumber, this tantalizing chamber of excretion pushes the threshold of interior bathroom design."

"Instilling both a deep love of the natural world as well as a childlike sense of wonderment, no bathroom has ever been such an emotional experience as this...."

Speakers play continual audio of a babbling brook and the calls of wild forest creatures, and shimmering LED lights mounted in a navy blue ceiling mimic a starry night sky. The artistic heights this exemplary institute of excretion reaches were such that I felt like I had to check with someone to make doubly sure I wasn’t accidentally defiling a graduate student’s art installation.

This wondrous forest aesthetic contrasts with several abstract elements to create a subtle but welcome sense of surreality. The stall doors are a crimson red, custom-designed to mimic the iconic pay phones of London....

The best bathroom at the University of Wisconsin—Madison... and don't miss links to reviews of other on-campus bathrooms. 

Ben Carson's house is a monument to himself.

Or so it looks in these pictures in The Guardian.

Maybe that's just the museum wing.

The man's been in the inspiration business for 2 decades. How many motivational speeches has he given over the years? What plaques and statuettes and medals have been handed to him on these occasions? What effect has that journey had on his brain? Not as much as surgery, I take it, but still, what is his judgment like after all of that fol-de-rol?

"I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did."

"I’d like to write something as great as ‘Pinocchio’ or ‘Little Women.’ I won’t say ‘Moby-Dick’ because that’s impossible. I’d like to write a book that everybody loves. I’d like to take a picture that someone wants to put above their desk so they can look at it while they’re writing a letter or doing whatever they’re doing while sitting at their desk. I’d like to do a painting that would astonish people."

Says Patti Smith, quoted in the NYT in an article that coincides with the publication of her new book "M Train." We're told the book is "elegiac," and the author of the piece, Penelope Green, seems to be trying to write in an elegiac manner. For example:

Meanwhile, her cat throws up on her pillow. Her clothing betrays her; her pockets are torn. Her shoelaces come undone and trail in rain puddles. Her socks get tangled in her jeans, and escape at inopportune moments. Walking through Washington Square, a lone sock breaks free from her pants (stuck there from the night before), and a giggling teenager returns it to her. Small losses echo the larger ones: She is undone when a woman commandeers “her” regular table in her favorite neighborhood cafe, retreating to the bathroom and wishing upon the interloper a spectacularly gruesome death, like a victim in one of her beloved crime dramas.

When the cafe closes, its owner gave Ms. Smith that table and chairs. These and other totems are in the bungalow... A Chinese rug rescued from her townhouse on the edge of Greenwich Village, where she has lived since the late ’90s, because the cats were urinating on it....