I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself.

A miserable collection of little secrets, that’s all any of us is. 

Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers:...

You are asking us to lie, Colonel?””I am asking you to omit. Surely, amidst the…the infinite gradations of human venality, that particular sin ranks low.” The old man kneaded the folds of his throat. “What...

He was afraid that the secrets she’d kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut...

A funeral is no place for secrets.

No. No more surprises. No more secrets. Or so help me, I will rip off your own leg and beat you with it.

Knowing this secret, being the only one chosen to know, makes me feel important in a way. But it’s a negative importance, it’s the importance of a blank sheet of paper. I can know because...

A tiding of magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told

They have to tell,” he’d saidWell, apparently so.But why? What is it that comes from the telling?Some of it must be relief, of course. A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a...

It turns out that when there is some conspicuous gap or contradiction at the center of someone’s existence, there is probably a very specific, obvious reason for it, and the reason you’re avoiding confronting it...

The secret of wisdom is to be overly curious, like a cat–to take the time to look closely, to use all your senses to see and to touch and to taste and to smell and...