Matthew Fray

I was arguing about the merits of [leaving] a glass by the sink. But for my wife, it wasn't about the glass. It wasn't about dishes by the sink, or laundry on the floor…

It was about consideration. About the pervasive sense that she was married to someone who did not respect or appreciate her. And if I didn't respect or appreciate her, then I didn't love her in a manner that felt trustworthy. She couldn't count on the adult who had promised to love her forever, because none of this dish-by-the-sink business felt anything like being loved.

I now understand that when I left that glass there, it hurt my wife—literally causing pain—because it felt to her as if I had just said, "Hey. I don't respect you or value your thoughts and opinions. Not taking four seconds to put my glass in the dishwasher is more important to me than you are."

Suddenly, this moment is no longer about something as benign and meaningless as a dirty glass. Now this moment is about a meaningful act of love and sacrifice.

My wife knew I was reasonably smart, so she couldn't figure out how I could be so dense after hundreds of these conversations. She began to question whether I was intentionally trying to hurt her and whether I actually loved her at all.

Here's the thing. A dish by the sink in no way feels painful or disrespectful to a spouse who wakes up every day and experiences a marriage partner who communicates in both word and action how important and cherished their spouse and relationship are. My wife didn't flip shit over a dish by the sink because she's some insufferable nag who had to have her way all the time. My wife communicated pain and frustration over the frequent reminders she encountered that told her over and over and over again just how little she was considered when I made decisions.

—from This Is How Your Marriage Ends (2022)

Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Melissa Kirsch

Memorizing a poem is like taking a work of art that you love and letting it live and bloom inside of you.

Perhaps because I started memorizing poems early, before I was forced to do so in school, I never perceived the process as onerous, but rather as a fun challenge, a way to take something I loved and make it a part of me. I love that, amid the practical information and persistent worries and memories good and bad, my mind’s archive contains these bits of beauty, lyrics that float up into consciousness, lovely echoes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/briefing/memory-palace.html

Monica Hesse

On my way to visit the corrosive art, I dropped in on another tour group, this one containing mostly Japanese Americans. On that tour, one tourist gently interrupted the tour guide to ask whether she would like a complete translation of some of the Japanese calligraphy that was written on one of the paintings. The tour guide, who was White, exclaimed delightedly that, yes she would, she would love the full translation. And now she has learned something new about the place where she worked every day, and a painting she walked past every hour.

And that is America. That is how we tell the story of America. Together. Each one of us contributing what we can, and when we learn something new, we think about how wonderful it is to learn it, rather than burying the new information down where it can't hurt us.

--"What exactly does Trump think is in the Smithsonian? Following his most recent executive order, I went in search of some 'corrosive ideology.'" Washington Post, April 2,2025.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/02/trump-art-corrosive-smithsonian-executive-order/

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3GbFUjX

Monica Hesse

On my way to visit the corrosive art that I cannot imagine Trump has actually seen, I dropped in on a school tour where the guide plopped down a bunch of sixth-graders in front of a magnificent portrait of George Washington — the most famous one, the one by Gilbert Stuart— and there she revealed that there are actually multiple versions of this portrait in existence. They're drafts. Some are just sketches; some contain just his face. They're all just rough drafts that got closer and closer to the real thing, as the artist tried his best to capture this complicated man, this founder of our country, this enslaver, this hero. And that is how history is made. Rough drafts, again and again.

"What exactly does Trump think is in the Smithsonian? Following his most recent executive order, I went in search of some 'corrosive ideology.'" Washington Post, April 2,2025.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/02/trump-art-corrosive-smithsonian-executive-order/

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3GbFUjX

Alexander McCall Smith

   "Former people," said Isabel. "I was thinking about the people that the Bolsheviks described as 'former people.' They were anybody whom they regarded as enemies of their revolution. It's such a chilling term. They had no rights to anything, really—no right to work, no property, no freedom. The only right they had was the right to be shot."

   "They actually used the term former people?" asked Andy.

   "Yes," said Isabel. "It's chilling, isn't it? And that sort of attitude has had many followers: Nazis, Pol Pot, Jean Kambanda in Rwanda—it's quite a big club. Deny somebody else's humanity and human worth and you're on a very well worn and familiar road."

—The Conditions of Unconditional Love (2024), p. 76. 

Alexander McCall Smith

She looked at her watch. She could always go back into her study and do some work, but the thought did not appeal. She could watch television, which was something she very rarely did and which seemed a particularly unattractive prospect at the moment. Television was noise, and people being confrontational; it was people shooting one another or finding bodies, or dancing about on the stage in glittery costumes. Television was a cleverly packaged anodyne, Huxley's soma in some respects, but it was not what she needed.

— The Conditions of Unconditional Love (2024), p. 177.

Abraham Lincoln

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind; and therefore…I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

Ella Emhoff

I think it goes without saying that we are all existing in various levels of constant anxiety starting this year off. It's hard to describe the mixture of emotions I'm feeling right now. Everything in my personal life and the world is changing so fast. Watching so many people I love in so much pain and so many communities getting their basic human rights destroyed is heartbreaking, to say the least. While it feels almost odd to be engaging in fashion week right now, it's been really wonderful getting to connect and unload with my community. I truly believe the best way of processing things like this is to be with people who share those feelings and feel them together. It can become so scary and powerless when you hold all the weight on just yourself. The more I've been open, the more I feel in control of things I can do and ways I can help. 

—In her Substack newsletter, February 10, 2025. 

Hannah Arendt

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.

Srđan Cvijić

"I never liked the metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling water, but it applies very well to our situation," Srđan Cvijić at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy said. "One decision at a time, our regime has stripped Serbia of its democratic system. It didn't come overnight. First they captured the media, then the judiciary, then other independent institutions, then they started rigging the elections, and finally they are trying to strip us of the right to freedom of assembly.

"So my advice to Americans is never relax, always be on guard, democracy is not given, not even in the land of the free," Cvijić said. "Things can go backwards, you have to fight daily for your rights, otherwise someone will take them away from you.

"The most important thing to defend is solidarity and human decency," Cvijić added. "Do not allow the enemies of democracy to lower your own standards of political behaviour."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/03/europeans-democracy-advice-trump-americans

Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?

June 9, 1954.

Attica Locke

The guest chairs in his office matched the carpet, which matched the buttered-beige colors of the walls. The décor was attractive and strong, but blander than she would have thought his wealth and position afforded him. Caren couldn't see the point of having that much money if all of it led to beige.

—The Cutting Season (2012), p. 130-31. 

Roxana Robinson

[Photographer Todd] Webb's images from those visits provide a window into the painter's daily life. O'Keeffe wore hats to protect her face, and scarves to protect her long, lustrous hair; she said you should never let your hair get sunburned. She wore crisp white collars, which turned whatever else she wore—black linen, blue denim—chic. She liked to make "Tiger's Milk" for breakfast, a concoction of banana, skim milk, powdered milk, wheat germ, and brewer's yeast, recommended by the nutritionist Adelle Davis. O'Keefe kept a series of Chow dogs, which she loved for their loyalty and dignity, their massive beauty. Their coats were so thick that she had a shawl made from the shedding.

—From "O'Keefe in the Frame," The Atlantic, February 2025, p. 20-25.