Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.

I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.

One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality.

We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.

In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons.