Of course, said the Queen, but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting
It’s a Buddhist meditation that Teza uses to calm his mind, to put aside not just the physical pain but the sadness and rage he’s feeling: He starts to whisper a prayer. Whatever beings there are, may...
I'm talking about those novels where the characters aren't really interesting and you don't care about them or anything they care about. It's those books I won't read anymore. There's too much else to...
I was learning that when you’re with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time. Yet
I often forget that other people’s stories aren’t simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn fr...
I do think back,' Mom told me, 'on my wonderful headmistress at Brearly, the one who told us we could have everything we wanted.... And then, years later, I went back for a reunion, and I told the hea...
I did manage to read some pages from a book that’s also about how people can find strength they didn’t know they had. What book was that? The Book of Common Prayer, Mom answered. Didion? No, Will. Mom...
His point: you don’t have to travel the world to see the ways we mistreat one another; it’s as close as the street outside our windows.
But people can be cruel in lots of ways, some very subtle.
Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
Mindfulness - it isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's being present in the moment. When I'm with you, I'm with you. Right now. That's all. No more and no less.
Books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grand...
Why didn’t this one say this, or tell someone that, or let anyone know she or he was so unhappy, so lonely, so scared? Lahiri’s characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each...
Were you sad to leave Cambridge? I asked her. She was, she said. Very sad. But she was also looking forward to being back in New York. The world is complicated, she added. You don’t have to have one e...
There are certain books that I mean to read and keep stacked by my bedside. I even take them on trips. Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent-flier miles, they’ve traveled so much.
The thing about Americans, she said, is that you’re very concerned about everything all the time. Mom
That’s one of the amazing things great books like this do—they don’t just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people all around you, differently.
That there’s great joy in thanking.
That day at chemo, we talked once more about the ending of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I just really want to know which character dies. I’ve read the ending again and again, I said. I hate not knowi...
She felt whatever emotions she felt, but feeling was never a useful substitute for doing, and she never let the former get in the way of the latter. If anything, she used her emotions to motivate her...