To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher “reality”...

If disaster, so be it, they said to themselves. There was nothing to be done except what could be done. The rest — like the salt water around them, which swallowed the snow without effort,...

I say this because as an older man I am prone to ponder matters in the light of death in a way that you are not. I am like a traveler from Mars who looks...

When I think about John William now, I think about someone who followed through, and then I’m glad not to have followed through, to still be breathing, to still be here with people, to still...

As soon as he was gone, we opened, “Baucis and Philemon.” An elderly couple living in a cottage, they’re granted a wish by Jove. They confer in private before Philemon asks, “May one hour take...

The color of the sky was like a length of white chalk turned on its side and rubbed into asphalt. Sanded–that was how the world looked, worked slowly down to no rough edges.

To die, he thought, was to escape passion’s grasp, but that was the last thing he wanted. Instead he wished to be seized by passion and pinioned, held in its palm forever—he could not imagine...

The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer...