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Waldo Salt believed in capturing “the truth” of the characters in a story. I had the good fortune of having several conversations with Waldo, and he was not only an extraordinary writer, but an extraordinary person. We talked about the craft of screenwriting a lot, and Waldo told me that he believe…

However satisfying writing is—that mix of discipline and miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control—it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and agony of loving.

The philosopher Gillian Rose wrote this in her las…

Fiction is a record of what has never happened and yet absolutely happened, and those of us who read it regularly have been changed and challenged and broken down a thousand times over by those nothings, changed by people who never existed doing things that no one quite did, changed by characters t…

What will you think about this from your deathbed? My husband’s wants had been consistent—to get married, to stay married, to have a child—while mine had become clear the hard way. I had, like so many fools before me, gotten right up to the edge of one life in order to learn I had to run in the opp…

I tried to watch the flight attendant explain what to do in case of an emergency, but I had seen it too many times to see her. The oxygen masks, the exit rows, the seat cushion that can float. We know this. We all know this by now.

The pandemic was still drizzling on, so there were not many on t…