I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I’d be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came...

He claimed to be a Marxist, the only one of his claims I believed. He had that Marxist passion for oysters and good Sancerre, and that Marxist paralysis when the waiter brought the check. Already...

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by...

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers — namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say,...

Though what is as sexy, as sweetly taboo as money? So secret, so unspeakable even among dear friends? How much did daddy leave you? How much did you get for that painting? How did you...

Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I knew I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as...

The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure...

Saying good-bye to a city is harder than breaking up with a lover. The grief and regret are more piercing because they are more complex and unmixed, changing from corner to corner, with each passing...

But love is strange, as they used to say at the Chameleon Club. Even those of us who value intelligence over appearance have discovered, to our chagrin, that a high IQ doesn’t necessarily translate into...

Throughout her life, she behaved as if she had never heard anyone suggest that a woman couldn’t do entirely as she pleased.

Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.