Summer sticks to her skirt sumptuously, in the shiny gray fabric hanging loosely from her curves. Her chestnut eyes, apparently hidden from strangers; her simple but graceful face, unpainted by Madison Avenue; and her straight...

Steve’s throat swelled with tension as the intimacy of the moment became more tangible. He moved his eyes from the dark, reflective river, to the dark, reflective pupils in Diane’s eyes. They seemed to quiver...

It will all work out, Inas. You come from a long line of survivors and strong women. So everything will be fine in the end. And we are always with you in spirit, to guide...

So your theory would seem to be that lying to yourself is no lie at all because you haven’t deceived any third party. And if you then convince yourself of those lies, you’ll believe them...

But despite these and many other differences, Evan and Heeb had become close friends – an improbability that could have been produced only by the even greater improbabilities that brought them together.

People should think that being a writer is cool. Even if you’re just a starving writer. Besides, most great writers were starving at one point or another. It comes with the title.

Yeah. Isn’t it great?

Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step...

My mother gave it to me mother, who passed it to me. Now is the right time to give it to you. Not just because you’re leaving and will need something that always connects you...

Because in the end, we die. It’s like Chekhov observed in so many of his plays: ‘in two hundred years, no one will even know we were here.