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The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with those who free you, who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel.

Sports sponsorship is now a global industry worth over $70 billion, and FIFA, which is the industry’s central player, earned $5.7 billion in the Qatar 2022 cycle and expects more than double that from the 2026 tournament, with an estimated record-breaking take of $13 billion. In 2024 FIFA created an entirely new tier of sponsorship, “Major Worldwide Partner,” and the inaugural slot went to the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco. The deal is reported to be worth around $100 million a year and will run for four years. According to FIFA, the revamped commercial program ahead of 2026 generated more advertising and sponsorship revenue than any previous standalone sporting event—and this was before a ball was kicked.

Once a student of mine, translating Euripides on a mid-term exam, came up with "wild in the grips of a god." Those were the days.

“The use of any word presumes a shared experience, for which the word is the symbol. If someone speaks about the flavor of coffee, it is because we have already tasted it; if about the color yellow, because we have already seen lemons, gold, wheat, and sunsets.”

“You’re smiling. But you must know yourself, since you are a literary person, that the work of fiction is always a form of recovery of the past, even if that past has to be falsified to seem real. The act of recalling the past in what we write doesn’t mean knowing the way it really was, but rather becoming the master of memories as they burn in the perilous instant of creation.”