Magazine stories, the best ones anyway, are generally a combination of three elements: access, narrative, and disclosure.

Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.

Everything I love about America is fragile.

Moping is an unattractive attribute in a man.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.

Only institutions that go about the old-fashioned business of taking in deposits from customer A and lending them out to customer B should be called banks. The rest should call themselves what they are. 'Parlors' would be appropriate, or 'dens' - words more suitable to venerable betting pursuits.

I think the absence of socks on men wearing suits and brogues is a problem. They'll live to regret that.