At home, the puppy Rose played with balls, struggled with the stairs, and slept behind my knees while we watched in adoration. It’s not that I was unhappy in what I now think of as the dogless years,...
As if music were a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.
That it was so completely their own that it would have been pointless to even try to speak of it to someone else.
Nebraska was white, a page as still as fallen snow. It was not crosshatched with roads, overrun with the hard lines of interstate systems. It was a state on which you could make lists, jot down phone...
Whenever possible, you need to go to the primary source to make your decisions. Regardless of whether or not you’re a student, it is never enough to rely on other people’s ideas. You have to look at t...
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...
The curaçao and the Vandermint sat
Sense trying to make him feel bad about it. She tilted back her glass and went past the gin for a second time. She
It was a wonderful thing to be needed by the person she most admired, to be told she was indispensable. It
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...
Have never subscribed to the notion of writing what you know, at least not for myself. I don’t know enough interesting things.
Further than five minutes ahead. But since I knew at the end of the week I couldn’t go back, I called a lawyer.
Espaliered
Demand absolute cooperation and attention. Roughly two-thirds of the guests looked frightened, but a scattered third looked both frightened and puzzled. These were the ones leaning towards the man wit...
But sometimes all the right things are as useless as nothing at all. Life,
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...
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
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?