Sometimes we mistake patience for weakness, but the patient person often realizes that it's much more important for another person to discover his or her own gifts and shortcomings--the patient person doesn't feel a need to "fix" other people, and so...
You know that point in your life when you realize that the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore… All of the sudden, even though you have some place to put your shit, that idea of home is gone… Or maybe it's like this rite of pass...
Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians ...
If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could ...
Kevin", his father began, "I've been thinking about it – I guess I was kind of carried away. It's just that I've waited so long for my old school to make it to the Regionals... I suppose I was living it vicariously through you. Keith says you're no...
...at Newsweek only girls with college degrees--and we were called "girls" then--were hired to sort and deliver the mail, humbly pushing our carts from door to door in our ladylike frocks and proper high-heeled shoes. If we could manage that, we grad...
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mental...
I told her that I didn't want to take any drugs. That I had come here not to take drugs. "Listen," she said, not unkindly, "up until now I would say that ninety-nine percent of all the narcotics you have taken in your life you bought from guys you di...
But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scen...
So, " Nathan said, attention focused on Adrian, "now that Vasilisa's graduated, what are you going to do with yourself? You aren't going to keep slumming with high school students, are you? There's no point in you being there anymore. " "I don't know...
My cousin Rebecca teaches comparative English literature at Midlands College. She’s always seeing Austen in the world around her.” “Exactly.” Theresa beamed. “Life is easier to understand when you think of it in terms of Pride and Prejudice...
Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organizario...
Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organizatio...
I hadn’t gone to Andover, or Horace Mann or Eton. My high school had been the average kind, and I’d been the best student there. Such was not the case at Eli. Here, I was surrounded by geniuses. I’d figured out early in my college career that t...
I may not know your life problems or situation. But one thing I know. There are things that you should be thankful for. Its important that you learn to say Thank you. Learn to say thank you. let go of negative energy and thoughts. Stop focusing on yo...
I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental...
When I was in London in 2008, I spent a couple hours hanging out at a pub with a couple of blokes who were drinking away the afternoon in preparation for going to that evening's Arsenal game/riot. Take away their Cockney accents, and these working-cl...
Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense caring about your discipline. Don't slack, don't ...
Every cuisine has its characteristic 'flavor principle,' Rozin contends, whether it is tomato-lemon-oregano in Greece; lime-chili in Mexico; onion-lard-paprika in Hungary, or, in Samin's Moroccan dish, cumin-coriander-cinnamon-ginger-onion-fruit. (An...
I don’t think I like that boy.” He growled, glaring for effect, just in case I hadn’t figured out his oh-so-subtle interpersonal cues. “He’s a sweet kid,” I insisted, folding the gray blazer over my arm. “He’s a teenage boy,” Cal sa...
