‘If a man die,’ William Carlos Williams once wrote, ‘it is because death / has first possessed his imagination.’ Death possessed the imagination of my patients that month, and my task was to repossess the imagination from death. It is a task almost impossibly difficult to describe, an operation far more delicate and complex than [...]

Sometimes I feel it’s so very cliche to love Jane Austen. I mean, it’s Jane Austen. Almost every girl with an English degree admires her for one reason or another. On top of the sheer romanticism of some of her books (well, strip out the socio-political bits and they’re pretty swoon-worthy), I just love her [...]

I’ve looked back over what I’ve set down so far, and it seems inadequate. Perhaps there is too much frivolity in it, or too many things that might be taken for frivolity. A lot of clothes, the styles and colours outmoded now shed butterflies’ wings. A lot of dinners, not always very good ones. Breakfasts, [...]

I wanted you to see something about her — I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, [...]

For those having trouble reading this: Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores [...]

I was reading my copy of The Shipping News this week, of which I bought at the Baldwin Public Library used book sale earlier this year, and I found this stuck in the middle: You can’t find that in a Kindle. This reaffirms my love for used books and my belief that they are more [...]

From “A House of My Own”: Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody’s [...]

“I am not an editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.” -Mark Twain So I wonder what Mr. Twain would think of an editor of a online publication? I probably shouldn’t ask.