Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered and everything was possible. A stick could...
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Once or twice a year I attended the English Romantic conferences held throughout Europe, brief gatherings perhaps not dissimilar in feeling for the participants than the feeling Jews have when they ge...
Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end.Darkness fell. Rain fell.I never asked: What question?And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, i...
It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I imagined my life could happen in another way. It's true that early on I became used to the long hours I spent alone. I discovered that I did not nee...
If you don't know what it feels like to have someone you love put a hand below your bottom rib for the first time, what chance is there for love?
I spent the morning reading Ovid. I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time.
I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, it would be on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a...
I hadn't thought about it until just now, but the night Daniel rang our bell in the winter of 1970 was the end of November, the same time of year she died twenty-seven years later. I don't know what's...
I filled the sink with soapy water and washed the dirty pots. And with each pot and pan, and spoon I put away,I also put away a thought I couldn't bear until my kitchen and my mind returned to a state...
Herman slipped his hand into mine, and I thought, An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand, and the next thing...
He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind a...
Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, and distant. once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photog...
Don’t you see? I said. He could change every detail, but he couldn’t change her. But why? His obtuseness frustrated me. Because he was in love with her! I said. Because, to him, she was the only thing...
Childhood is a process of slowly recomposing oneself out of the borrowed materials of the world.
Cand te tii cu cineva de mana, de pilda, e un mod de a-ti aduce aminte cum e cand nu spuneti nimic impreuna. Si noaptea, cand e prea intuneric ca sa mai vedem ceva, simtim nevoia sa gesticulam cu ajut...
But then a foreboding thought cast a shadow over the rest, blunt and unadorned, and it was simply this: that for most of my life i had been emulating the thoughts and actions of other people. That so...
But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would me...
At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, and that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages...
And then I thought: Perhaps that is what it means to be a father—to teach your child to live without you.