A life was owned by the person who lived it, he believed. What happened didn’t always happen because you wanted it to, but what you made of it was your responsibility.

At a certain age men began to shrink, and yet it was precisely at that age that their trousers became too short for them.

How do you go on knowing that you will never again – not ever, ever – see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second...

I suspect you’re thinking of Pascal,’ Finkler said, finally.’Only he said the opposite. He said you might as well wager on God because that way, even if He doesn’t exist, you’ve nothing to lose. Whereas...

You can’t have a church town without belief and you can’t have belief without intolerance.

An artist owed a duty to nothing except his own irresponsibility. It was OK for an artist to frolic in the water, no matter how bloody the waves or how high the tide rose. An...

Because art, for all its adventuresomeness, is also capable of being the most recidivist of human activities, forever falling back in reaction to what was itself a reaction to something else.

A waitress, bringing Finkler more hot water, interrupted Treslove’s answer. Finkler always asked for more hot water no matter how much hot water had already been brought. It was his way of asserting power, Treslove...

But the shouts and smell of smoke had a powerful effect on me. I don’t say they excited me, but they gave a sort of universality to what I was feeling. I am who I...

But he didn’t have to listen to his father. Taking after your father was optional, wasn’t it?

to bar communication between intellectuals, who are always our best hope of peace, is particularly self-defeating and inane. It declares, inter alia, that we have a) made up our minds about what we think, b)...