the themes of our life are connected, the seeds of our ending were there in the beginning, and vice versa.

see my self-exploration as self-expression. He says that, for a man with so many fleeting identities, it’s shocking, and symbolic, that my initials are A.K.A.

Six years is a long time. Yes, she says. Yes it is. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. I’ve lived that.

As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

Yes, she says. Yes, yes, yes. Wait, I think. Wait, wait, wait. SHE SAYS SHE WANTS a do-over. One day later she tells me she was in such shock on the beach, she couldn’t hear me. She wants me to repeat the proposal, word for word.

I’m the twelfth tennis player to be number one in the two decades since they started keeping computer rankings.

find peace in his claim that perfectionism is voluntary. Perfectionism is something I chose, and it’s ruining me, and I can choose something else.

I feel shooting pains in my chest. I tell Gil. He says it sounds like a typical broken heart. Tiny rips that refuse to heal. The result of overuse. Then he says, What are we doing about Wimbledon? Time to start thinking about getting ourselves overseas. Time to throw down, Andre. It’s on.

I was thunderstruck, dazzled by her understated grace, her effortless beauty. She looked, somehow, as if she smelled good. Also, as if she was good, fundamentally, essentially, inherently good, brimming with moral rectitude and a kind of dignity that doesn’t exist anymore.