Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.

He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought–some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the...

Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from...

…I tell myself it does not matter what one reads–favorite authors, particular themes–as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.

He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter–the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing...

I have produced no children of my own and my husband is dead,” she replied, an acid tone in her voice. “Thus I am more to be pitied than revered. I am expected to give...

You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid.

At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion?” …”You are mistaken, Ernest,” she said at last. “There is only the passionate spark....

I miss being a student,” said Abdul Wahid. “I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books.

But it’s not enough to be in love. It’s about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it’s what work you do … Better...

Memories were like tomb paintings, thought the Major, the colors still vivid no matter how many layers of mud and sand time deposited. Scrape at them and they come up all red and blazing.

Look here, it’s all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,’ said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. ‘It’s a particular passion of young men eager to sweep...

…as I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy.

My dear Mrs. Ali, I would hardly refer to you as old,” he said. “You are in what I would call the very prime flowering of mature womanhood.” It was a little grandiose but he...

We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.