Everyone thought they would be friends for decades, forever. But for most people, of course, that hadn’t happened. As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with...

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in your name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever...

All ethics and morals are culturally relative. And Esme’s reaction taught me that while cultural relativism is an easy concept to process intellectually, it is not, for many, an easy one to remember.

He will experience that prickle, that shiver of disgust that afflicts him in both his happiest and most wretched moments, the one that asks him who he thinks he is to inconvenience so many people,...