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From her first short story collection, Monday or Tuesday, which explores the challenge creatives face trying to capture something truthful through artifice, and striving towards the sublime with imperfect tools such as language and memory.  Anyone who's struggled to express a...

Apparently, long before it had become a quaint cultural cliché, the can-can was absolutely shocking. Twain gasped! He protested! He clutched his pearls! But he wasn't fooling anyone. We know it was all in good fun, and that deep down he loved it. Deep down,...

From his poem Chapter Heading. In his earlier work, Hemingway experimented with the lean, muscular writing style he eventually distilled to what he referred to as "iceberg theory." That is, leave your meaning mostly beneath the surface.  We love this...

From his novel Nicholas Nickleby.  I’ve thought about this quotation often over the past few months as we collectively endure isolation and grieve gatherings. In his own time, Dickens (and his characters) also contended with a "dread disease," consumption, and...

Italy had the Renaissance, Germany had the Reformation, and France had Voltaire. Ever the proponent of rationalism and tolerance, Voltaire had an extraordinary rhetorical gift, and this quotation from a letter to Prince Frederick in 1770 is no exception.  ...