I think it’s something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper ans she said to Mr. Sloane ‘I see here that another octogenarian has just died....

Ever since the robot was first invented, there have been people who swear up and down that this marks the first step towards the fall of man … To be fair, their arguments are backed...

A gossip spread a rumor, and became notorious from the deed. The gossip then started a fire beyond their control, and when it spread, the gossip spread the word around, but people just ran away....

It wasn’t enough that I had to worry about playing well and winning the game, but I also had to deal with possibility that one of my teammates could be dragged off the field by...

The plural of anecdote is not data.

[The cats] scamper in front of my legs, causing me to fall and face plant into whatever furniture is closest. They especially like to play this game when I’m carrying piping hot coffee.

Short men are happy, for they can pass easily through the door. Tall men are happy, for they can stand erect and pluck oranges with their hands. Again, short men are angry, for they cannot...

After all, this was the place where I’d had my first meaningful conversation with a female, it was the site of a football’s first encounter with my groin, and above all, it was the location...

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And...

Always preoccupied with his profound researches, the great Newton showed in the ordinary-affairs of life an absence of mind which has become proverbial. It is related that one day, wishing to find the number of...

I remember calling the council’s cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.

In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out – checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how...

storyteller” felt about right. I am a teacher and a storyteller in that order. I have made my living and my real contribution to my community as a teacher, and I have been very lucky...

There is a point in the future where even the worst disaster starts to settle into an anecdote.

Our family was nearly torn apart on several occasions by arguments started when the refrigerator door was open for what my father deemed as ‘too long.

Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is...

The first way not to shake hands is executed by receiving someone’s hand in yours and proceeding to squeeze it tightly, hurting the other party as if they were responsible for a past death in...