Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can't do much about how drawers fill up.

Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can't do much about how drawers fill up.

What could be worse than having to be seen resorting to your own life.

The writer, as I see it, has the right of way, so it's up to the reader to look out.

There's much too much mismating in the Microsofted phrasery of our day. And I like sentences that are societies unto themselves and shun any need for paragraphic shelter and fellowship. But I don't like seeing paper going to waste, either.

I have never felt at ease in language. I did not grow up among books or among people who read them. I heard words emerge from mouths but didn't get the hang of how people hung the things out as if on lines to get their gripes and recreational distempers yowlingly known.

It was my mother who taught me the one worthwhile thing: when they ask if you like what you see in the mirror, pretend that what they mean is what's behind you--the shower curtain, the tile, the wallpaper, whatever's there.