Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement. There was no planning for a ca...
As Tim followed me up the narrow stairwell, he playfully pinched my butt with every step, a pleasant (and painful--in a black-and-blue sort of way) reminder that all I had yearned for as a student twenty-five years before had come true, even if I had...
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...
Never talk to waiters like that," Kit said. "Can I help it," he said, "if I only went one year to finishing school?" "It isn't manners," she said like a sensible schoolteacher quietly disciplining a small boy, "it just isn't smart." I thought of the ...
Aging offers certain rewards that youth cannot. It represents the culmination of our efforts in building self-knowledge, families, friendships, careers, and the sense of self that comes from facing whatever adversity we may have encountered. Aging is...
The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Q...
Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, ...
I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't...
Galloway: You put him on the stand and you get it from him! Kaffee: Oh, we get it from him! Yes! No problem! We get it from him. [turns to Sam as if he were Jessup on the stand] Kaffee: Colonel Jessup, isn't it true that you ordered the Code Red on S...
Woman in Telephone Booth: [on the phone at a booth] Morris, you will not believe who is coming down here! [stops Jerry] Woman in Telephone Booth: Jerry Langford, right? Jerry Langford: Right. Woman in Telephone Booth: [talks on the phone again] Oh, M...
Simon Foster: Tobes, I don't want to have to read you the riot act but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act, like section one, paragraph one: don't leave your boss twisting in the wind and then burst in late, smelling like a...
Dr. Alice Howland: Hi, Alice. I'm you. And I have something very important to say to you. Huh... I guess you've reached that point when you can answer any of your questions. So this is the next logical step. I'm sure of it. Because what's happening t...
Colonel Nicholson: [looks at the completed bridge] I've been thinking. Tomorrow it will be 28 years to the day that I've been in the service. 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it...
For some young artists, it can take a bit of time to discover which tools (which medium, or genre, or career pathway) will truly suit them best. For me, although many different art forms attract me, the tools that I find most natural and comfortable ...
On the second floor was the office in which Houston pounded an ancient typewriter with two fingers, always setting an example of unceasing hard work for his admiring students. They had no hint of the fact that their hard-driving dean had contracted t...
A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to he...
Linnie. And this Winnie.” They wore identical smiles, their bright black eyes sparked with curiosity. “Are you the doctor?” “No, I’m just volunteering.” “I knowed that, too.” Winnie gave her an exaggerated shake of the head. “Girls ...
Percy Wetmore: What's up his ass? Paul Edgecomb: You, always, you Percy. Percy Wetmore: What I got a hate in you boy, that the way it is around here? Paul Edgecomb: Why don't you just move on and take that job down in Briar Ridge? Oh yeah, I know all...
Eddie Morra: Well, in order for a career to evolve, I'm gonna have to move on. Carl Van Loon: And you would even think that, would only show me how unprepared you are to be on your own. I mean you do know you're a freak? Your deductive powers are a g...
We're in Des Moines, Iowa today, were in Omaha, Nebraska yesterday and Boise, Idaho the day before. When we landed at the airport in Boise, from Portland, Oregon this lady from our plane came up from behind as we walked down the terminal. She approac...
Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if ...
