16-05-27 When I was a kid, I thought I would grow up to be an actress. I thought I would live in New York City, in a high-rise apartment building, with my husband and family of, oh, five or six kids. I thought Id live an urban, impossibly sophisticated life....

16-05-27 Close your eyes for a moment. Youll know just who I mean here, and its okay. You dont need to say his name aloud. Maybe youre married. Or hes married. Or both. But youve envisioned a parallel life -- one you will never live, and wont ruin your perfec...

16-05-17 Thick Description Eleanor Chai I cut lines of ink as I read through the night. I imagine the margins on pages are slim wings between plankton and stars. I find what I need in far sources. I make them intimate, I make them mine with the speed of ligh...

16-04-21 So you never knew whether it was a boy or ...? A girl? asked Malcolm. I nodded. A boy, he said. Had the approximate date and went to the Registry of Births to look it up. I sat there, trying to take in what Malcom had said. I felt as though Id been...

16-04-21 Time is running out for my friend. While we are sitting at lunch, she casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of starting a family. What she means is that her biological clock has begun its countdown, and she is being forced to consi...

16-04-21 Several years ago, while attending a communications course, I experienced a most unusual process. The instructor asked us to list anything in our past that we felt ashamed of, guilty about, regretted, or incomplete about. The next week he invited pa...

16-04-18 If a man wants to live a long life he should marry an intelligent woman, according to scientists. 科学家称，男人要想长寿，就得娶个聪明的老婆。 Dementia experts said that having an intelligent partner can act as buffer to the disease. By studying the...

16-04-05 The girls life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the womans original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to...

16-04-03 In the eternal universe, every human being has a one-off chance to live --his existence is unique and irretrievable, for the mold with which he was made, as Rousseau said, was broken by God immediately afterwards. Fame, wealth and knowledge are mere...

16-04-03 Make the opportunity The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every lesson in school or college is an opportunity. Every examination is a chance in life. Every business transa...