The thing about Americans, she said, is that you’re very concerned about everything all the time.
If heathen prayers were indeed the best of all, then mine should count big time.
Mom was often asked to give speeches about why she felt so committed to the cause of refugees. She would say, Just imagine that you are awakened tonight by someone in your family who says to you, ‘Put...
When we denigrate mediocrity, we discourage ourselves and others from trying new things. It would be great to be a great painter, but it's also great just to paint. Or sing or throw pots or knit scarv...
Joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they’ve realized and achieved, or how they are remembered.
Life depends on what she thinks of as ‘big bursts’ and ‘little bursts.’ Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen cu...
2. People who promise things that they never give are like clouds and wind that bring no rain: do not be misled by promises. 3. Your vote is your power: use it to make a difference to your life and yo...
And reading all different kinds of books is not simply reading all different kinds of books; it’s a way of becoming more fully human and more humane.
Freedom can still depend on ink, just as it always has.
He’s also able to accept death. He’s not happy about it, but he’s perfectly calm. When I stop all this treatment, it will be because it’s time to stop.
I can’t see giving up real books, she said. And I love that I can give away my books after I’ve read them. Think of the first edition of The Magic Mountain I’m giving Nico. It was printed along with t...
I'm not the same reader when I finish a book as I was when I started, brains are tangles of pathways, and reading creates new ones. Every book changes your life. So I like to ask; How is this book cha...
Mom had always taught all of us to examine decisions by reversibility—that is, to hedge our bets. When you couldn’t decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to chan...
That’s one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves. Mom
The Bolter
The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith
The day’s passage was by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It read: That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall...
There's one question I think we should ask of one another a lot more often, and that's What are you reading?It's a simple question but a powerful one, and it can change lives, creating a shared univer...
We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it's not owing like a debt to one person- it's really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instance-...
Asked: And I was very surprised by the ending. Were you? Of course not—I’d read it first. I don’t think I could have stood the suspense if I hadn’t known what was going to happen. I’d have been way to...
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