Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. ...
You must remember that there was virtually no air travel in the early 1930s. Africa was two weeks away from England by boat and it took you about five weeks to get to China. These were distant and magic lands and nobody went to them just for a holida...
I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego i...
She'd been a good nurse, and now she'd never be a nurse again. She was bitter about it and had turned herself into the slut bride from Planet X, as if even in human form, she wanted people to know what she was now: different, other. Trouble was, she ...
Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death...
She didn't see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann's accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It ...
I was a swimmer growing up, which meant being in the pool at 5 A.M. You get used to it. You get up at 4:15 A.M.; my parents, who were amazing, they were up at 4:15 A.M. or earlier to drop me off at the pool and then go to work. I eventually stopped d...
He will know from and early age that failure is not disgrace. It's just a pitch that you missed, and you'd better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot heard round the world. My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by fa...
The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about....
After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memo...
Although the terms teaching and learning are typically paired, those of us who teach know that students don't always learn. When I complained about this early in my teaching career, a colleagues chided me: "Saying 'I thaught the students something, t...
North is a powerful man, and you're still connected to him." Flo frowned. "Probably sexual memory, those Capricorns are insatiable. Well, you know. Sea Goat. And of course, you're a Fish. You'll end up back in bed with him." Andie slammed the car doo...
All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity—happy marriages, healthy bodies—are ours to have. We live long, good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer...
People say I’m not punctual. That’s absurd, because I’m early. It’s my fame and wealth that are late. Once they get here, nobody will care what time I show up—just so long as I show up.
In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneline...
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit ...
The primary purposes of the political pamphlets of the early 1700s were neither to enlighten nor educate the masses, but to incite partisan conversation and spread commensurate ideas . . . Facts were not permitted to fetter the views they espoused, a...
I dozed, jolting occasionally at the driver's loud pronouncement of upcoming stops. At this early hour the bus hummed along quietly with few passengers, so the stops were infrequent. In the hazy surrealism of predawn, there really was not much to see...
Her hand wandered under his shirt, feeling his rapid breath expand his ribs. She hesitated for a second—wondering what the chances were that either of her parents would come home early—then lifted his shirt with both hands, guiding it up his arms...
My father was a doctor,' she says, 'a very kind man. He died in the early '70s, relatively young.' She taps the cigarette packet on the table. 'Of lung cancer.' 'Oh.' 'But the thing about that is,' she says as she exhales, 'it doesn't take very long ...
It’s been said that the most successful people are often early risers. So that’s why I started getting up in the afternoon, which is well before any “successful” person even thinks of going to bed.
