What Samuel Johnson, Thoreau, and Charlie Parker Were All Talking About.
Often I become preoccupied with a particular idea, and take a very great pleasure in seeing that idea appear over and over. I keep extensive notes on many ideas, most of which I never have time to...
View Article“Owning Up to Our Choices Ultimately Makes Us Happier; If We Don’t Like our...
Happiness interview: Laura Vanderkam. My favorite part of BlogHer, the blogging conference, was getting to meet so many people — and so many people whose work I admire. I loved Laura Vanderkam’s book,...
View Article10 “Rules of Life” from Tolstoy. What Are Your Rules?
Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List Day. This Wednesday: 10 “Rules of Life” from Tolstoy. I have a love/hate relationship with Tolstoy. I love his fiction, and for that reason keep feeling compelled...
View ArticleFrom Ray Bradbury: “Love What YOU Love!”
A thoughtful reader send me a link to a wonderful site, Letters of Note — “correspondence deserving of a wider audience.” In particular, she pointed out a letter that writer Ray Bradbury wrote to a...
View ArticleVirginia Woolf: “The Immense Success of Our Life Is…That Our Treasure is Hid...
[Of her marriage to Leonard Woolf]: “The immense success of our life is, I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it.” — Virginia Woolf, Diaries,...
View Article“Over-Spending. Over-Eating. Under-Sleeping. Watching Too Much TV.”
I’m so happy for my friend, the incomparable Molly Jong-Fast. Her new novel, The Social Climber’s Handbook, just came out. It’s a delicious, dark, biting story about some characters here in New York...
View Article“A Perfect Evening Involves Dorky Friends and Ridiculous Hijinks.”
Happiness interview: Liza Palmer. Liza Palmer is a bestselling writer with a new novel, More Like Her. One element of the novel is our assumption that we understand the realities of other people’s...
View Article“Loving-Kindness Is the Better Part of Goodness.”
“Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists and makes it a little less difficult to practice those minor virtues of self-control and...
View Article“Have You Ever Thought That Your Real Life Hasn’t Begun Yet?”
One day, toward the end of a conversation I was having with the painter David Salle in his studio, on White Street, he looked at me and said, “Has this every happened to you? Have you ever thought...
View Article“Give Me a Second Glass of Wine, and All My Hard-Fought Self-Control Falls by...
Habits interview: Hannah Nordhaus. I know Hannah Nordaus from college. Back then, neither one of us talked about becoming writers (or at least I didn’t, and I don’t remember Hannah talking about it,...
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