The story of his day. Americans love the idea of vaccinating Africans. What could be nicer than a photograph of dusty little Nigerian children lined up for inoculation on the front page of the New Yor...
Sense trying to make him feel bad about it. She tilted back her glass and went past the gin for a second time. She
Novel excerpts rarely benefit from group critique. It’s one thing to get all those opinions when you’ve finished, but when you’re still in the middle of a project, it’s like having fifteen people give...
Lunchtime. She waited for a minute for Mr. Fox to say what he had come to say. She didn’t think he had come all the way from his office in the snow, a good ten buildings away, to give her a weather re...
It wasn’t the girls you saw at all, only a gathering of distended abdomens, overinflated balloons from which small wisps of girls were attached.
Imagine that every now and then a book is picked up by a prestigious New York agent and sold to a prestigious New York publisher, but it is statistically akin to finding a four-leaf clover. On the ban...
Further than five minutes ahead. But since I knew at the end of the week I couldn’t go back, I called a lawyer.
But over time people break apart, no matter how enormous the love they feel for one another is, and it is through the breaking and the reconciliation, the love and the doubting of love, the judgment a...
And washing it off in the sink. Finish up your lunch. We’re starting now? Good a
You may have heard the news that the independent bookstore is dead, that books are dead, that maybe even reading is dead—to which I say, Pull up a chair, friend. I have a story to tell.
You don’t look like you should be with me, he said, falling into the enchantment of the movie they made together. He
You don't find strangers declaring themselves to you awkward?' But then she wouldn't, would she? People must fall in love with her hourly. She must keep a staff of translators to interpret the proposa...
You could see just a trace of the daughter there, the way she held her shoulders back, the length of her neck. It was a crime what time did to women.
Writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing. The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your...
Without worry to protect me, every thought that came into my mind received real attention.
When you think of love you think as an American. You must think like a Russian. It is a more expansive view.''Americans havea bad habbit of thinking like Americans,' Roxane said kindly.
When we do things differently, and very often we do, I remind myself that it is rarely a matter of right and wrong. We are simply two adults who grew up in different houses far away from one another.
When she came back she gave him a paperback called Commonwealth. It was a very big deal last year, won the National Book Award, sold through the roof. Do you know it?
When did the mammals get confusing? Who can’t look at a baby and a puppy and see the differences? You can’t leave babies at home alone with a chew toy when you go to the movies. Babies will not shimmy...
When Teresa was told that she had lost summers, she made a point to curse and weep, but she wondered silently if she hadn't just been handed the divorce equivalent of a Caribbean vacation.