You don’t realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when...

You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.

I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I stayed, the more asinine the attempt seemed, and that what I’d become more interested in is...

Sometimes you just find a culture that breaks your heart,” she said finally.

He smelled of cigarettes and whiskey, the smell of Cambridge and youth.

Go. Go to your beautiful dances, your beautiful ceremonies. And we will bury our dead.

But he did not believe ordinary citizens created art. True art was anomalous; it was a rare mutation. It didn’t happen simply because one willed it so. He thought it an utter and exasperating waste...

Is it always that way with men, that first burst of love or sex the thing that binds you? Do you always have to harken back to those first weeks when just the way he...