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On page 607, alluding to the end of my first marriage (and carefully remembering to state that that's none of his business), he very sweetly says that...more

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On page 605, Blumenthal says that 'I made friends with Hitchens's friends the novelists Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.' True in its way. I particular...more

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Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on...more

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You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pi...more

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What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.

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Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkw...more

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Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on...more

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Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but...Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)

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There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He ...more