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‘Okay. Carlton had your dress hoicked up over your ribcage!’

With quiet matter-of-factness, taking rightful warmth from her cup with both palms, Phoebe said, ‘He wanted to see it. So I showed him.’

‘Yes, completely straightforward. And logical. Carlton wanted to see it, so you hoicked up your…

It’s a matter of pressing interest, I find. What is the purpose of my average day?

If you’d asked me that five years ago, I would’ve equably cited John Dryden, who said that the purpose of literature is to give ‘instruction and delight’. That verdict goes back three centuries, and in my opinion …

And coming closer with ridiculous haste. In fact you start to feel a bit of a dupe every time you open your eyes and get out of bed. The psychic clock (people have written about this) definitely accelerates…After I turned sixty my birthdays became biannual, then triannual. The Atlantic Monthly grad…

S. N. Behrman, one of our fine writers of the comedy of ideas, used to bemoan not the loss of his talent—right to the end, his mind was prickly—but what he called vitality. How much of what’s called talent, he used to say, derives from that astonishing foolhardiness that comes with energy! For near…

I’ve studied friends at the end of their lives. Who that I’ve known has shown me something of how to die? On the other hand, who claimed my sympathy but not my admiration? I can still hear Clifford’s operatic outcry—this at fifty-seven—“Clifford Odets, you have so much still to do!” And, his last, …