Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- d...
Souls, like rays of light, exist in perfect, parallel equality, always. But for when infinitely short a time they pass through the rough and delaying mechanism of life, they separate and disentangle,...
Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.
Off Castle Garden, a mile to the southeast, near the western edge of Governors Island, a ship lay resting through a foggy spring night before the long and arduous trip back to the old world—whether Ri...
No, De Roos said. You mustn't thank me. The relatives of patients thank the physician as if the physician were God. It's no good, and if the patient dies it turns to ash—not just for them, but, as you...
Mortification of the flesh. Nicolò drew back almost imperceptibly. What do you think we just did? Alessandro asked. This walk, for days and nights in the open air, without sleep, under sun, moon, and...
Many times, his father had taken him to read them, insisting that they were the most important things he could have, and implying with a sharp dismissive gesture of hand and arm that wealth, fame, and...
I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better.
I'm a critic. I write essays about works of art. It's like being a eunuch in the seraglio, but unrequited love is the sweetest, and I have the proper distance. I can compress the qualities of beauty I...
I didn't know the world could be like this ... I've never seen the sky in such a passion of kindness.
Humankind, or at least American-kind, will lose its edge as we produce more and more pipsqueaks and everyone gets nicer. Whole generations of pipsqueaks will be so fucking nice you won't be able to te...
Humanity requires for its understanding and governance not science but art,
He heard the Baymen tell of war, but they never said it could be harnessed, its head held down, and made to run in place.
Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land.
For the next hour or two, keeping up with Alessandro would be a task that would set the boy to breathing hard and make him think that something might be wrong with his heart, because he found it diffi...
Evidently, rigging cables is therapy for the Swiss: or part of their theology. What was it that he used to say? A balanced arc between mountain rows / as servant to his master shows / the power of bes...
Critics can neither build nor explore. All they do, really, is say yes or no - and complicate it.
Craig Binky decided that to salvage his position he would bear any burden and pay any price, and find out exactly what was going on. He had to redeem his honor. He decided to ask a computer. He
But you won’t abdicate.Of course not. It’s my duty to go on, to maintain the line. I can’t possibly fail in that. It’s as if you and I were throwing a ball back and forth to establish a record, and ha...
But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn't know what to do with themselves. The wisdom, perfection, and b...