There are many essential police skills they don’t teach you at the Academy, said Pendergast. Ass covering, as it is so charmingly termed, being the most important.
The ultimate offense was the idea that Europeans discovered the New World to begin with, as if the people living here didn’t exist before Europeans saw them.
The town had a faint air of benign neglect that only added to its charm: a seaside village with white clapboard buildings, seagulls wheeling overhead, uneven brick sidewalks and local shops. They pass...
The survivors are deprived of that vital human connection to their past; they are robbed of their stories, their music and dance, their spiritual practices and beliefs—they are stripped of their very...
The real blow to the project came in 1973. I expected a renewal of my NSF grant for 1973. This was automatic. The NSF rarely cuts off funding in the middle of a research project, especially when the r...
The minute the judge saw Jennie in her little blue suit with the big red bow, and saw her signing back and forth with the interpreter, he would never, ever, in a thousand years, find her a menace to s...
The divide between the wealthy and everyone else is a false dichotomy—and one that obscures the real problem: there are many wicked people in the world, rich and poor. That is the real divide—between...
She picked up the book she was reading, Beyond the Ice Limit, found her dog-eared place at the beginning of chapter six, and began to read. The sea horizon lay against the sky, blue against perfect bl...
She became particularly irritable toward me and Sandy. She would not allow us to approach her, let alone touch her, and she often broke into loud screams if we approached. She also became curiously in...
Sarah was nine years old that summer. Her passions were reading and music. Sarah devoured books, sometimes two a day. Lea had to check her every night to make sure she turned out her light, or she wou...
Our methodology was to pretend not to understand Jennie’s requests unless they were signed. She didn’t know the sign for play, but she slapped the floor. It was a deliberate movement that to me looked...
Niccolò, for God’s sake, they accused me of being an accessory to murder, they said I planted a gun at that villa, they’ve indicted me for making false statements and obstruction of justice! They thre...
Jennie’s testimony was meaningless to determine the facts of the case, but that he was allowing it anyway. The judge wanted to see the signing chimpanzee in action.
Jennie taught me just how worthless that is. Being smart. Jennie wasn’t smart by human standards, but she had a set of values. Real values. You see, for Jennie, freedom was the highest value. Language...
I have not felt her presence, as I had always believed I should if she should predecease me. Where is she? I am afraid for her, and for myself.
I have my books. I don't live in the actual world.
I don’t know jack about wine, sorry. You should learn. It is one of the true and ancient pleasures that make human existence tolerable.
I can scarcely believe the cruelty of the last century. It staggers the soul.
He said we didn’t merit a family all by ourselves. I’m not sure I would go that far, but it’s an interesting thought. And an idea influenced, no doubt, by the existence of Jennie. In the end, you see,...
God give me chastity, but not right now.