Mary Pilon Quotes

It's still thrilling, even if my work is something that people even pretend they're interested in on a first date or at a cocktail party.

- Mary Pilon

Human beings have kicked around the concept of what individual happiness means for centuries, from the Bible to the ancient Greeks to the 1859 bestseller 'Self-Help.'

- Mary Pilon

For professional athletes, the motives for cheating generally are more obvious: money, fame, and often a low likelihood of being caught. But why would a middle- or back-of-the-pack runner lie or cheat in a race that doesn't even matter?

- Mary Pilon

When most people think of Tae Kwon Do - which, in the United States, is not all that often - they think of sparring, a form of competition that both men and women perform at the Olympics.

- Mary Pilon

If workplaces that enlist happiness consultants really care about worker satisfaction, why not offer better maternity and paternity policies? Daycare options? They could advise managers to stop calling workers to come in on weekends or expect them to answer emails late on weeknights.

- Mary Pilon

The first few days without a cellphone were difficult. I felt liberated from the static of Facebook and Twitter but feared that I had missed some email or call that someone had died.

- Mary Pilon

VR could, in theory, connect sports fans in different geographical locations so they could watch a game together. Instead of a group text or Twitter stream of commentary playing out across time zones when a team is playing, our avatars could inhabit virtual stands, side by side with the rest of our digital tribe.

- Mary Pilon

With a smartphone in tow and a playlist humming, a runner may miss the crunch of leaves underfoot, the enthusiastic cheers of benevolent strangers, or even her own breath. And, for many runners, leaving the mobile device at home is the most liberating part of the sport.

- Mary Pilon

Women in finance bore the brunt of layoffs more than their male counterparts during the Great Recession in 2008 and were also more likely to have been in back office jobs that were replaced by computers.

- Mary Pilon

I've often wondered if the trade-off for growing up in the relative newness and freshness of the West Coast was befuddlement when it comes to historical preservation. We don't have many old things, and we don't really know what to do with the few that are around when our default response is to compost or field burn.

- Mary Pilon

A 401(k) is essentially a basket of mutual funds intended to help people save for retirement.

- Mary Pilon

While most American labor unions have struggled for the past several decades, professional baseball players comprise one of the strongest packs of organized workers in the world.

- Mary Pilon

Lizzie Magie was a pretty astonishing woman. She was an outspoken feminist, she had acted, she had done some performing, she had written some poetry, and she was a game designer.

- Mary Pilon

Women's marathoning was not added as an Olympic medal event until 1984 due to unfounded and bizarre concerns among Olympic organizers about women's ability to run longer distances. It was finally added after much campaigning.

- Mary Pilon

Competing in junior fencing requires lessons, equipment, and travel that may cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, keeping talented athletes from wielding sabers or masks.

- Mary Pilon

Some communities are formed through schools, churches, workplaces. But much of how we learn about one another as a society comes from physically being together in places like skating rinks.

- Mary Pilon

Like Barack Obama's father, Trump's mother was an immigrant. But Trump doesn't often bring up his Scottish ancestry on the campaign trail.

- Mary Pilon

Wall Street trading floors have long been seen as bastions of testosterone that rewarded, literally, those with sharp elbows who could throw a punch.

- Mary Pilon

One of sports journalism's great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.

- Mary Pilon

For years, women in India were largely discouraged from participating in high-level sports - and, unless the women were wealthy, good facilities were hard to come by, anyway.

- Mary Pilon

The America's Cup World Series was created in 2011, with an eye toward conjuring more off-cycle interest and marketing opportunities. It coincided with the ascent of foiling catamarans, a type of boat that goes faster and looks almost Photoshopped, the way it practically floats in air when it races.

- Mary Pilon

Endnotes, often confused with footnotes that live at the bottom of a page, is that lump of text at the end of the book, sometimes even relegated to a tiny font size. They're often forgotten but, in nonfiction, particularly history books, can offer a fascinating footprint into the author's research, a joyful, geeky abyss.

- Mary Pilon

By the middle of the century, retirement culture - exemplified by timeshares in Florida, the golf industry, and AARP membership - was booming. Americans, it turned out, were pretty good at figuring out how not to do anything in their twilight years.

- Mary Pilon

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have sparked a booming industry of so-called influencers - people with large-scale followings who are paid considerable sums by large companies to tout their products or ideas.

- Mary Pilon

Precisely at the moment when an athletic career is most on the line and fan perceptions of a Herculean, supra-human performance are highest, an athlete's brain may be at its most vulnerable.

- Mary Pilon

Money can be a reflection of our perceptions of power, self-esteem, personal history, fears, and happiness.

- Mary Pilon

Sports like sailing, rowing, and bobsled have long vexed spectators and television producers.

- Mary Pilon

As the U.S. prison population has surged over the decades, the legal profession's distaste for former inmates has become more conspicuous. And it isn't only law. Medical schools often have committees to evaluate cases and mitigating factors but are generally reluctant to admit ex-inmates.

- Mary Pilon

So who or what is to blame for baseball games that go on forever? Two oft-cited culprits are constant replay calls and batters who leave the box in between every pitch to adjust their gloves and helmet and shin guards and elbow pads and then knock the dirt off their cleats before working up their stride for the next at-bat.

- Mary Pilon

We spend millions on fitness each year, yet we seem to get fatter.

- Mary Pilon

Generations of thinkers have made typewriters their frenemies, and long before there were Gmail inboxes, print correspondence stacked up, some hastily written and impulsive on the steel gadgets.

- Mary Pilon

For generations, minor-league baseball has been seen as the scrappier, sometimes seedier, counterpart to its big-league sibling. Games are often cloaked in strange and sometimes awkward theme nights. Some of the mascots are ragged or downright bizarre. The ballparks are smaller and filled with fewer fans.

- Mary Pilon

Trucking-company terminals are places where paperwork gets filled out, driving orders are given, and partners are assigned. They can often be social hubs for drivers, breaking up the monotony and solitude they face on the road.

- Mary Pilon

In the modern road-running era, digital photography has intersected with weekend-warrior culture, creating a golden age of social-media humblebragging. For some, the marathon course is sacred ground. For others, it's a personal movie set.

- Mary Pilon

Instagram influencers project a specific, highly crafted image of perfection - one that is largely white, thin, and psychologically Zen. Critics argue that this boom, in turn, has helped fuel excessive self-promotion in which we post about only the good moments rather than reality - essentially, a distorted echo chamber.

- Mary Pilon

The fitness industry has long thrived off the well-intended coming through their doors and signing up with dreams of self-improvement, only to fade into their couches. Those who stick with it often feel like hamsters on treadmills.

- Mary Pilon

In the 1880s, women were decades away from earning the right to vote. Few owned property - if they were even permitted to do so. In addition to childcare obligations, many toiled in work that was either underpaid or not paid at all. Essentially, the gears of progress for women were moving slowly in just about every arena of life.

- Mary Pilon

As a producer, it's not unusual to find yourself on the field, backstage, often with a camera crew and living with constant anxiety of accidentally ending up in the shot.

- Mary Pilon

Despite the laserlike focus it generates, 'Tetris' has no clear endpoint and no easily defined opponents. Unlike with most other video games, you're playing only against yourself, without any concrete goals other than to keep on fitting blocks into other blocks.

- Mary Pilon

Much like film, authors spend a fair amount of time alone in the creative process, tossing their work out into what can feel like an abyss, void of real people.

- Mary Pilon

My parents wielded disposal cameras and Polaroids with the best of them, occasionally begging for at least one decent photo of my brother and me at the state fair, in front of the Golden Gate bridge, or smiling half-heartedly next to a mascot.

- Mary Pilon

Journalism isn't about how smart you are. It's not about where you're from. It's not about who you know or how clever your questions are. And thank God for that. It's about your ability to embrace change and uncertainty. It's about being fearless personally and professionally.

- Mary Pilon

Recognizing chronic sadness may encourage someone to reach out to a friend, family member, or counselor rather than concealing the distress.

- Mary Pilon

London, Ontario, sits halfway between Detroit and Buffalo, a description that applies as much to its soul as to its geographical coordinates.

- Mary Pilon

In reporting, you will often be humbled by the courage others have in telling and trusting you with their tale, no two alike.

- Mary Pilon

To drive a semi-truck, a driver needs a commercial driver's license. While formal training isn't required, most drivers enroll in a program to help prepare them for the written and practical exams in their states.

- Mary Pilon

Many of my 20- and 30-something peers struggle with student loan debt and high rent, and more than once, I've erupted in laughter at the idea that I will collect any Social Security in my Betty White years.

- Mary Pilon

As the 19th century teetered into the 20th, the clank of typewriter keys went from solo to symphony. They were the weapon of choice for professional writers, the business elite, people with things to say and the need to say them quickly.

- Mary Pilon

Individual participation in the stock market through 401(k)s helped fuel the go-go days of Wall Street in the 1980s and birthed asset management juggernauts like Fidelity, Vanguard, Pimco, BlackRock, and dozens of others.

- Mary Pilon

When George Hirsch ran the New York City Marathon in 1976, the first year the course snaked through all five boroughs, the event was a lean affair. He and two thousand others dodged wayward bicycles and pedestrians on the streets, with little help from an anemic police presence.

- Mary Pilon

The greatest obstacle in 'Tetris' is time and one's own ability to navigate it - kind of like life itself.

- Mary Pilon

Long before social media made things like bib replication easier, banditing at major races was viewed as a brave act. Rebellious runners like John Tarrant gatecrashed races as a political statement, in protest of rules about amateurism that limited how much money athletes could earn in appearance fees and endorsements.

- Mary Pilon

Most major races, including the New York City Marathon, require runners to provide photo identification when picking up a bib. Most provide bibs only a few days before the race, shortening the window in which someone could copy a bib.

- Mary Pilon

In a culture obsessed with happiness, Americans may not be allowing for acceptance that it's OK to sometimes not be perky.

- Mary Pilon

I was an ambidextrous child, and the symmetry of roller skating was a welcome respite from my awkwardness with physical activities that involved a ball or a racket.

- Mary Pilon

Sports fandom transcends gender, race, language, political preference, socioeconomic status, or any other way you can think of slicing this planet.

- Mary Pilon

Throughout the Great Recession of 2008, the average 401(k) balance lost anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of value. Nobody was more harmed than baby boomers or recent retirees, who, unlike younger workers, didn't have the time for the market to rebound or were no longer contributing and therefore unable to invest when stocks were cheap.

- Mary Pilon

Social media has created a digital latticework, but it has also, for some, created abusive commenters, silos, and validation rather than curiosity.

- Mary Pilon

The phenomena of taking photos and sharing them isn't new, but with Instagram being mobile, both have become cheaper and faster, producing the instant gratification of knowing how our shots look in our palms.

- Mary Pilon

As the issue of youth fitness - from obesity to proper exercise regimens - takes on more resonance in schools and communities across the country, CrossFit Kids and other preschool fitness programs are raising questions about when and how children should start playing organized sports or hitting the gym.

- Mary Pilon

At the turn of the twentieth century, board games were becoming increasingly commonplace in middle-class homes. In addition, more and more inventors were discovering that the games were not just a pastime but also a means of communication.

- Mary Pilon

I remember, often, when you tell people you're doing a book about board games, they think you're totally nuts. And that might be warranted. But I feel like if we can't get the story of Monopoly right... what hope is there for anything else?

- Mary Pilon

The more I think about the Olympics, even from afar, its mere concept stuns me. I can't think of any other line of work where, every four years, people gather to be ranked one, two, and three, then are more or less told to evaporate until the next go-around.

- Mary Pilon

'Power breaking,' also called Hanmadang - which means something like celebration or festival in Korean - involves breaking large amounts of wood, concrete, granite, and the like with specific hand and foot techniques. Practitioners rely on repeated resistance training and the idea that, over time, the body can adapt to stress.

- Mary Pilon

Journalists know that often you don't grab stories, they grab you.

- Mary Pilon

Increasingly, football fans are arguing that the game is bloated with too much down time. The officiating is clumsy.

- Mary Pilon

I think that when you talk to people about Monopoly, they love talking about their memories associated with it. And for me, I'm the same way. I mean, when I think about Monopoly, I think of my family playing at the holidays.

- Mary Pilon

Even as Instagram defines our visual moment, we use the app's filters to travel backwards in time, to make our images resemble the Polaroids of yore by casting them literally in a different, more nostalgic light.

- Mary Pilon

Women's combat sports have been on a good run in the United States. Claressa Shields won a gold medal in women's boxing at the London Olympics in 2012, when it became a medal sport. American women won medals in taekwondo and judo as well.

- Mary Pilon

Something amazing happens when you tell people you write about sports for a living. You begin to feel like you're in a scene from 'Dawn of the Dead.' The way people change when talking about 'their team' can be nothing short of zombiefication.

- Mary Pilon

The fall of Rome seemed unthinkable to people at the time but inevitable to historians reflecting upon it with the benefit of context.

- Mary Pilon

Once you let go of the idea of waiting for a magical lightning bolt of genius to hit, you can really get to work.

- Mary Pilon

There are good reasons for not wanting to host the Olympics. The Games can be costly and, in spite of their patriotic overtones, can unintentionally expose a nation's weaknesses to the world.

- Mary Pilon

Using a typewriter, at times, feels more like playing piano than jotting down notes, a percussive exercise in expressing thought that is both tortuous and rewarding.

- Mary Pilon

Before she made her bid for the U.S. presidency in 1872, Victoria Woodhull worked as one of the first female stockbrokers in the country, starting a firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, with her sister in 1870.

- Mary Pilon

The conditions for harassment are built into the very structure of the trucking business, beginning with the training process.

- Mary Pilon

Yachting may call to mind champagne flutes and seersucker, but danger and risk have always been a part of the America's Cup.

- Mary Pilon

Typically, if a politician makes immigration an issue, it's because of the belief that immigrants are taking jobs from Americans.

- Mary Pilon

As it turns out, just hanging out around athletes doesn't actually make one more fit.

- Mary Pilon

If bingeing on bad emergency-room-themed television has taught me anything, it's that crisis situations bring out the best and worst in people.

- Mary Pilon

Without federal assistance, most elderly Americans would be unable to afford long-term care - and most nursing homes would be unable to keep the doors open.

- Mary Pilon

Historically, companies haven't hesitated to end their relationships with professional athletes amid scandals.

- Mary Pilon

Banning sports is a ludicrous proposition.

- Mary Pilon

The fear among athletes and organizers is that sailing is becoming more associated with silver hair than silver trophies.

- Mary Pilon

Ultimately, the joy of sports is social and psychological, both in the ballpark and around a television on Super Bowl Sunday.

- Mary Pilon

I'm astonished at how quickly the Great Recession came and went.

- Mary Pilon

As a journalist and longtime photographer, I love Instagram and the connection it gives me to my friends and family as I journey afar or for me to view their lives from my perch back home.

- Mary Pilon

Trucking is the backbone of U.S. commerce. Consumers rely on the industry to move the parts for their cars, the food for their dinner tables, and, increasingly, the goods they order online.

- Mary Pilon

While the U.S. government is unlikely to ever limit the number of football games, plenty of parents are refusing to let their children play the sport due to the risk of head injuries.

- Mary Pilon

I was a fly on the wall at Gawker Media during the heyday of this thing called blogging.

- Mary Pilon

It's not uncommon for some Khmer boxers to fight with dangerous frequency, sometimes as often as weekly or bi-weekly, getting up to three hundred or more fights in a career, with the length of a career varying from fighter to fighter, some engaging in bouts far past their prime.

- Mary Pilon

Because sports are a religion, it's difficult to imagine a world without the Olympics, and to be sure, they have given us many glorious moments.

- Mary Pilon

Some Americans, like those working in government or nonprofits, know the consequences of having their salaries public.

- Mary Pilon

Football, like boxing, will never go away, just occupy a different role in the American zeitgeist.

- Mary Pilon

I'm a realist about who really reads books and who acts like they read books.

- Mary Pilon

No one in my family was a journalist, and it didn't seem like a real job. Part of me still doesn't think it is.

- Mary Pilon

Virtual reality has an exciting future and oodles of room to grow.

- Mary Pilon

I think that my main business is as a news person.

- Mary Pilon

To play 'Tetris' is to knowingly opt in to something that has no end and no way of winning.

- Mary Pilon