“One of the commands I give myself daily is the short Latin phrase, ‘Amor fati.’ This phrase means ‘Love of one’s fate.’ It’s an order from me to me. If you like, it can…

“He went to the kitchen for water, for air, for the screws that tightened in his chest, & when he returned it was if she had diminished to a viceroy of herself, nothing…

“In ancient Greece, the epics of Homer did not really have a word for the human body. Not as a whole, only as an assembly of various limbs—and especially the ones that are…

“I am back on the evidentiary path. I would like to think I have fully recovered from my case of hopium. The peer-reviewed papers and books I have published since this book excerpted…

“Bessie’s gone under the water,/baby held high in the air/hoping that someone will grab her./Safety was only a few streets away/when the boat capsized/into the flooded street./Men in the nearby john boats/quickly plucked…

“Months later, Dr. Naib would tell me about those first moments of our relationship from her perspective. She was sitting in her office when my file appeared in her queue. She read the…

“We came to know it as the goose tree, because one year a pair of geese nested in the broken-off top. We might as easily have called it the raccoon tree, the owl…

“That was the first time I laid eyes on my future bride, but something was already astir. As J. D. Salinger had written in ‘A Girl I Knew,’ ‘She wasn’t doing a thing…

“And here comes my neighbor Stávros. He lives with his wife and son in the only other house on this side of the small bay. If I’m on my veranda when he passes,…

“Thalia began by pointing out the general geography of Athens and proceeded to speak about the history of the small church, whose exterior walls gleamed white and whose bright blue painted dome was…