There was no solution, Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of...
There is no excuse for cruelty, but--at an orphanage--perhaps we are obliged to withhold love; if you fail to withhold love at an orphanage, you will create an orphanage that no orphan will willingly...
There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.
The student and the teacher had contrasting ideas about the sentence, which was: There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
The prostitute became uncomfortable -- as if 'talk' were in a category of aberrant behavior, short of which she drew the line. 'You have to pay more for that,' the redhead said. 'Talk can go on for a...
The point was - he wasn't . It was as if he'd forgotten how! Jack still knew his lines, but he was out of character... Jack had acting. He was just Jack Burns - the Jack Burns at last.
The past was where he lived most confidently, and with the surest sense of knowing who he was—not only as a novelist.
The chain of events, the links in our lives—what leads us where we’re going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don’t see coming, and what we do—all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, o...
That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make the make-believe matter to him more than real life mattered to him; that's when he lear...
Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic, Richard told me. And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious.
Meaning Michael Milton; meaning the whole thing.
Lupe’s language is just a little different, Juan Diego was saying. I can understand it.
Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note.'Sorry,' said the note.'Just not big enough.
LAST NITE I HAD A DREAM. NOW I KNOW FOUR THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN’T CHANGE – BUT I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY. I KNOW THAT I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT. I KNOW WHEN I’M GOING TO DIE – AND NOW A DREAM HAS...
It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
It is the well educated who will improve society—and they will improve it, at first, by criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as students, the brighter of them w...
Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose...
I'll bet every fucking one of your angels is going to be terrifying!
Good evening, knocked-up faculty daughter. How are you managing now, you smelly little slut?
Garp was a natural storyteller; he could make things up, one right after the other, and they seemed to fit. But what did they mean?