Rishita Chaudhary

In the Russian nesting doll of personhood, the child is always there, deep inside the incremental persons who grew out of her, informing and influencing them, but not identical to them. The key, I think, is to hold all the selves we used to be with tenderness, but to also let them go with courage.

I’m often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: “Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”

The subject matter can be dispiriting. But the books themselves are, I think, uplifting. None tries to ignore the brutal horror and devastation in the events it covers. None treats the victims as too remote to care about or the perpetrators as too monstrous to understand. None gives in to apathy, cynicism, or indifference. Instead, all make heroic

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We navigate the unknown frontiers of the social universe through a sextant of existing relationships — nearly every new person we meet is within only a few degrees of separation from someone we already know. But every once in a while, pure chance intercedes to remind us that whatever structures of control we may put into place, however much we may

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Pessoa, however, went beyond masking to a kind of deliberate dissociation. In a section of “The Book of Disquiet” titled “How to Dream Metaphysics,” he prescribes a method for dissolving consciousness, which in its rigor resembles a manual on self-hypnosis, or a set of religious exercises. First comes the reading of novels, which trains you to care... See more