The death of a parent, he wrote, 'despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we...
Of course the activists—not those whose thinking had become rigid, but those whose approach to revolution was imaginatively anarchic—had long ago grasped the reality which still eluded the press: we w...
Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.
How could this have happened when everything was normal?
Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.
Aging and its evidence remain life's most predictable events, yet they also remain matters we prefer to leave unmentioned, unexplored.
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything.
I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome.
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.
So hot that August comes on not like a month but like an affliction;
I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were each the person the other trusted.
I bought new strings of colored lights. This served as a profession of faith in the future. I take the opportunity for such professions where and when I can invent them, since I do not yet actually fe...
Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service.
We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression....
I wanted to get the tears out of the way so I could act sensibly.
I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.
De fiecare dată aceste rugăminți pentru prezența lui nu au făcut decât să-mi întărească conștiința tăcerii definitive care ne-a despărțit.
We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. . . .Grief i...
Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone. The connections that made up their life--both the deep connections and the apparently (until they are broken) insignificant connections--have all va...
It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we use...