In a book I am reading the author talks about word people versus fist people. As if words could not also be fists. Aren't often fists.
If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away.
I believe that fear of being a failure plays a large part in goading many women who are ambivalent about motherhood into maternity. That, and the fear of missing out,
Are you a political prisoner, Dooley?Her blue eyes, immense now in her gaunt face, turned a pitying gaze on the reporter who'd asked her this. Yes, she said. And so are you.
What do dogs think when they see someone cry? Bred to be comforters, they comfort us. But how puzzling human unhappiness must be to them. We who can fill our dishes any time and with as much food as w...
The poet Rilke once reported seeing a dying dog give its mistress a look full of reproach. Later, he gave this experience to the narrator of a novel: He was convinced I could have prevented it. It was...
It is one of the great bafflements of student fiction. I have read that college students can spend up to ten hours a day on social media. But for the people they write about - also mostly college stud...
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.
Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain’t worth it either.
Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won't hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happen...
Barbarity
Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I'll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.
You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flâneuse. You didn’t think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man...
Whenever he saw his books in a store, he felt like he’d gotten away with something, said John Updike. Who also expressed the opinion that a nice person wouldn’t become a writer. The problem of self-do...
There's a certain type of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog?
She sometimes has panic attacks before class. Hence the meditation, sometimes supplemented with benzodiazepine.
Rather than, say, Toni Morrison, who called basing a character on a real person an infringement of copyright. A person owns his life, she says. It’s not for another to use it for fiction.
I’ve known plenty of women who brace themselves whenever they leave the house, even a few who try to avoid leaving the house. Of course, a woman has only to wait until she’s a certain age, when she be...
Idyllic is how Kundera describes human relationships with animals. Idyllic because animals were not expelled with us from Paradise. There they remain, untroubled by such complications as the separatio...
A pause here to confess, not without shame: I never heard the news that you'd fallen in love without experiencing a pang, nor could I suppress a surge of joy each time I heard that you were breaking u...