Estamos tan acostumbrados a disfrazarnos para los demás que al final nos disfrazamos para nosotros mismos. FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Certainly, families like Harriet’s (and Hely’s) would not tolerate for one moment brick-throwing at children white or black (or purple, as Edie was fond of piping up in any discussion about skin color...
But though it was the most resonant and real-seeming thing that had happened in a long time, I didn't want to spoil it by talking about it...
But though I knew just how lucky I was, still it was impossible to feel happy or even grateful for my good fortune. It was as if I’d suffered a chemical change of the spirit: as if the acid balance of...
But then, six months ago, my dad hauled me with him to this shaddy town in Alaska. Seward Peninsula, just below Arctic Circle? And then, middle of May—we flew to Fairbanks on a prop plane, and then we...
But he knew absolutely everything—work that other people didn't know how to do or care to learn anymore—it hangs by a thread, this trade, generation to generation.
But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was a hollowness at the heart of it that-I knew-made her sad.
But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writ...
But I think maybe it’s more like a column of figures where you add two numbers wrong at the start, and it throws the total. If you trace it back, you can see the mistake – the point where you would ha...
Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.
At this question, I felt a sharp rush of despair - for as bad as I felt there was nothing he could do for me, and from his face, I realized he knew that, too.
As much as I enjoyed her company I was slightly uneasy in her presence; not because of any lack of charm of kindness on her part, but because of a too-strong wish to impress her on mine,
As I stood with her on the platform - she impatient, tapping her foot, leaning forward to look down the tracks - it seemed more than I could bear to see her go. Francis was around the corner, buying h...
Aristotle says in the Poetics, said Henry, that objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art. And I believe Aristotle is correct. After...
Are you going somewhere? I said, regarding him timidly. The suit made him seem a different person, less melancholy and distracted, more capable—unlike the Hobie of my first visit, with his bedraggled...
Anyway, she loved horses a lot, my mother. When she was growing up she had a horse she said got lonely sometimes? and he liked to come right up to the house and put his head in at the window to see wh...
Another thing I figured out, after a few days in the house on Desert End Road: what Xandra and my dad really meant when they said my dad had stopped drinking was that he’d switched from Scotch (his be...
And–since this willful amnesia had kept Robin's death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form–the...
And-maybe it’s ridiculous to go on in this vein, although it doesn’t matter since no one’s ever going to see this—but does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the h...
And you love her, yes. But not too much.Why do you say that?Because you are not mad, or wild, or grieving! You are not roaring out to choke her with your own bare hands! Which means your soul is not t...