David Copperfield had a fever when he’d gone to bed, and Larch went to check on the boy. Dr. Larch was relieved to feel that young Copperfield’s fever had broken; the boy’s forehead was cool, and a sl...
Dan would entertain Owen and me by describing Mr. Tubulari’s pentathlon, his winterthon. The first event, Dan Needham said, is something wholesome, like splitting a cord of wood—points off, if you bre...
DREAMS EDIT THEMSELVES; DREAMS are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever.
DON’T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT, he said. WE’RE PALS, AREN’T WE? WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR? I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOU.
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.
By '95 - in New York, alone - more Americans had died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam.
But she drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch—it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen—and what she imagined there was to watch on...
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead …’ Pastor Merrill assured us. ‘For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead,’ my father said.
But first, he knew he had to apologize for hurting Dr. Larch’s feelings – it had all just slipped out of him, and it made him almost cry to think that he had cause Dr. Larch any suffering. He went str...
But don’t you see how your … opinions can be disturbing? It’s very American—to have opinions as … strong as your opinions. It’s very Canadian to distrust strong opinions. I’m a Canadian, I said. I’ve
But Vienna was in its death phase; it lay still and let me look at it, and think about it, and look again. In a living city, I could never have noticed so much. Living cities don't hold still.
But I had to keep my hands under the desk—my fists under the desk, I should say. The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law...
But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a l...
But Americans are not great historians, and so, for years—educated by my neighbor—I thought that sagamore was an Indian word for lake.
At that moment, everyone walks on the sky. Maybe all great decisions are made without a net, The Wonder herself had told him. There comes a time, in every life, when you must let go.
At Circus of The Wonder, only young women—just the girl acrobats, of a certain age—were trained to be skywalkers (The Wonders themselves). This was also on purpose, and entirely Ignacio’s doing. The l...
As often as I feel certain that God exists, I feel as often at a loss to say what difference it makes—that He exists—or even: that to believe in God, which I do, raises more questions than it presents...
As for the river, it just kept moving,as river do--as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro--to and fro. If, at this moment in ti...
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
And when Dr. Daruwalla breathed in her dangerous aroma, he thought he'd at last identified the smell of sex, which struck him as an earthy commingling of death and flowers