Anecdotal Evidence

Two of the three copies of Boswell’s Life of Johnson I own were gifts from my brother. He loved garage sales and thrift shops and had no sh...

“A knowledge of men and of books is also to be desired; for it is a writer’s best reason of being, and without it he does well to hold his t...

Robert Penn Warren in Democracy and Poetry (1975):   “The will to change: this is one of the most precious heritages of American democrac...

We like a neat and predictable understanding of our fellows. No surprises. An honest man never lies and an angry man is never forgiving -- c...

“If you will look in on me sometime in the summer of 2026, I may be able to tell you whether my things are going to last.”   This is Edwin...

Eccentricity, it appears, is an inheritable trait, like dimples and hemophilia. Take the case of the Sitwells. I know Dame Edith and her bro...

A friend tells me he and three other men have for a decade met monthly for lunch and conversation. All work or worked in the past for the sa...