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.
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...
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, had just been published. The other was a Pulitzer Prize–winner, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout,
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...
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...
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, writes Kabat-Zinn. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and accep...
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally,
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.
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...
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...
Christopher Isherwood’s Christopher and His Kind,
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...
I’d read in Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith,
One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you...
Mom would often talk about a refugee boy she’d met in a hospital in Afghanistan. He was the victim of a land mine and had lost a leg. She said to him that she brought greetings to him from schoolchild...
There’s never a good excuse for not doing anything—
Mom also believed that there is such a thing as a good secret. Maybe something kind you did for someone but didn’t want that person to know, because you didn’t want him to be embarrassed or feel as th...
She thought you should be able to keep your private life private for any reason or for no reason. She even felt that way about politicians—so long as they weren’t hypocrites—and worried that we’d neve...
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.
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