Learn the discipline of being surprised not by suffering but by joy. As we grow old, there is suffering ahead of us, immense suffering, a suffering that will continue to tempt us to think that we have chosen the wrong road. But don't be surprised by ...
I see life as a waste. You grow up. Get a job. Have a family. Retire. Then die. But there's one thing worth living for and that's love and it always will be. It will be happiness with someone you can't live without. Someone to have silly arguments wi...
Another cat? Perhaps. For love there is also a season; its seeds must be resown. But a family cat is not replaceable like a wornout coat or a set of tires. Each new kitten becomes its own cat, and none is repeated. I am four cats old, measuring out m...
Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very n...
Aspiring novelists should be taught that the old adage, “Write about what you know,” isn’t limited to what you have personally experienced. Vicarious experience is also a great part of what you know. Read a lot of history and it becomes part of...
What kind of kids live in Mulhoney, Wisconsin? Would they like me? Would I like them? Have they ever eaten sushi? That's usually how I determine food sophistication. Maybe a personal ad would get the ball rolling: Insightful, hardworking, 16-year-old...
If we're going to get this country out of its current energy situation, we can't just conserve our way out; we can't just drill our way out; we can't bomb our way out. We're going to do it the old-fashioned American way, we're going to invent our way...
Tell me what you’re looking for and i will become that for you. I can sacrifice my inner freedoms for you without looking twice at my old journals and solid promises I made to myself about such things. But you must be prepared to kill me when the s...
I think I really thought I was a boy until I was ten years old because my parents divorced when I was born, and so my three brothers were almost like my fathers growing up. So they taught me how to ride a bike and all that stuff. I really was just ki...
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is To meet an antique book In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young. His quaint opinion...
When I was old enough to know better, I ate a bar of soap in the shape of the Muppets' Fozzie Bear, because I loved him so much I wanted to consume him, even if doing so made me ill. I didn't yet know the word 'foreshadowing.' Fozzie was the only fir...
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which...
In the old Republican days the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure tha...
Now, as a non-Amish person in the twentieth century who is not a part of the aging and thus noncoveted seventy-five-plus marketing demographic that views things like cell phones and iPads with that quaint, old-people mixture of astonishment, fascinat...
The feminist girls she knew at Oberlin, her roommate among them, were the kind of people who made you feel bad for liking what you liked. Sometimes when Emily was tired or blue she liked to watch "When Harry Met Sally", or "Love Actually", or old epi...
Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a book to play some chords, so I was laying down 'Hound Dog' and things like that when I was 10 years old in 1955. That's the way I was. My ear was glu...
Later, when I heard that he had cheated on me, I couldn't believe it. My housemate told me that Carlos had been bothering some girl down at the store. Her father was furious and came by with two pit bulls, threatening to take Carlos apart. Carlos den...
The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view ...
I was doing a show at the National Youth Theatre, playing an old man. Before that I had played fat clowns and I thought, 'If I want to have the career I would like, I am going to have to lose weight.' I was just starting drama school, and found I was...
The first play I did was 'Philadelphia Here I Come.' Can you imagine that? I am 37 years old I am doing my second professional play and I am on stage with John Malkovich. Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf and Gary Sinise. One huge name after another. I was ...
I've been trying to write a book since before I was old enough to vote, and I've collected many rejection slips from publishers and magazines. I used to keep them all stuck to my refrigerator, with magnets, but an ex-girlfriend told me they were depr...
