I think empathy is a guy who punches you in the face at a bus station, and you're somehow able to look at that him and know enough about what situation he was in to know that he had to do that and not to hit back. That's empathy, and nothing ever happens in writing that has that kind of moral heroism about it.

We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

One of the best things I’ve read about that inexplicably, but endlessly, fascinating group of people, the so-called Serious Collectors of 78s. Petrusich burrows into not just their personalities but the hunger that unites and drives their obsessions. She writes elegantly, and makes you think, and most important manages to hang onto her skepticism in the midst of her own collecting quest.

What’s old doesn’t need to be old-fashioned. It gets reborn.

Ireland starts for me with the end of The Dead, which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

I'm just saying, take courage. That and pretty much that alone is never the incorrect thing to do.