Heidi Pitlor

Anderson portrayed the city in Dark Laughter.

Furthermore, in a new study reported in the journal Science, subjects who read Alice Munro stories — specifically, the collection Too Much Happiness — demonstrated sharper social and psychological insight than those who did not.

The daylight, he remembered, was a sort of medicine. Truly nothing was as acute or upsetting in the first light of day.

But what happens if and when writers begin to outnumber readers? What happens when writing becomes more attractive than reading? Will we become — or are we already — a nation of performers with no audience?

Make it interesting and it will be true: this is what story writers live by.

Sometimes people aren't nice,' I began. 'Then why are you always telling me to be nice?' Because someone has to break the cycle. Kindness can be contagious. And it has to start somewhere, right?

We — editors, writers, teachers, publishers — need to do whatever we can to enliven readers, to help create communities for them if we want to continue to have readers at all. Our independent bookstores are the front lines, and many booksellers are fighting the good fight. Here, books stimulate conversation. Conversation stimulates a sense of community. Listening happens. Thinking. The exchange of thoughts.

Mom’s got this secret fear that if you don’t control your life, if you don’t control your man, he will eventually destroy you.

after a luncheon party with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Luise Rainer, Greta Garbo, and two producers — “I think it was a psychological test to see how I would act” — Knopf offered O’Brien work as MGM’s “European Scenario Editor.

I think our hopes are made when we are young, and we can never adjust them to the real world.

I said I had a three-year-old with broken fingers, and you said, ‘Maybe he owed somebody money.’” “Yes,