I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.

At a certain point, you must be able to slip loose. At a certain point, you found that you had been set free. You could be anyone, he thought. You could be anyone.

Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.

I have to admit that 'Psychology Today' was one of the first magazines I started reading, back when I was 13 or 14, because I was the kind of kid that was curious about the mysterious human mind - I hoped to learn about telekenisis, multiple personalities, psychosis, and various other cool and terrible things that happened inside people's heads.

A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

Maybe love, like suffering, is relative.

There are all kinds of strange threads in American culture, and places where sympathy is extended and places where it isn't, and places where outrage is extended and places where it's not. It's this constantly shifting barrel of eels.