We’ve carried on this playful debate for decades. My wife thinks generosity is the most important virtue; I think courage is.

I believe deeply in God. At the same time, midway through the first year of my ninth decade, I know with certainty almost nothing at all about God.

Who gave you permission to speak to anyone, especially to someone you love, with that kind of cruelty?

Who has a seat at your table these days - and who doesn't, anymore?

History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again.

The more we talk, the more we realize we’re made for one another.

Differing studies tells us that women initiate divorce somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of the time.

Differing studies tells us that women initiate divorce somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of the time.

As New Year's Eve approached, I thought about resolutions I’ve made and failed at in the past.

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —

Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.

I remember the first time the instructions to have a great time were interrupted.

Pleasure is complicated, and we need more and more practice at it.

Oh lay me down in Forest Lawn in a silver casket.

Put golden flowers over my head in a silver basket.  .  .  .

Beneath all these disasters is the looming suspicion that things may not, in fact, get better.

The first time I saw him he was walking toward me, jaw clenched, his eyes unkind. I was a ten-year-old little boy, and he frightened me.

Why Am I Here? My answer to this question may not be at all like yours, but here is what works for me.

On a Thursday early in August, I woke at dawn from a dream I couldn’t remember but realized must have come from deep in the mausoleum of my memory, a forgotten crypt from which two former friends, neither of whom I’d seen nor spoken with in forty years, rose like zombies and shambled into my first conscious thought. Before I was fully awake, I whispered into my pillow, so not to disturb my sleeping wife: I hate these guys.

Every thoughtful adult knows there are times when it’s necessary to lie. I’ve spent the decade since she said this trying to figure out how to distinguish lies from the truth, and how to determine when telling the truth is the wrong thing to do.

What I remember is not her voice or the remainder of the story, but how I felt leaning against her as she read: safe and cherished. This nightly ritual of reading is laid at the base of my history with her, and with books, forms a foundational piece of who I am.