It’s not a secret:  the best conversationalists are rarely the ones with their mouths open. Your wittiest friends likely have great powers of observation, and those people you most admire because they always seem to know the perfect thing to say probably really said very little in those sparkling conversations you are recalling so vividly in […]

I probably have more sympathy than most people for all those editors whom history has come to ridicule for rejecting stories that have now become classics. I freely admit I spent many years on the literary hot seat.  As an acquisitions editor, and later, as an executive editor tasked with making the final call on whether […]