The Vulnerables

by Sigrid Nunez

Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described.

I have heard that Chekhov wanted to write a novel that he was going to call Stories from the Lives of My Friends. Probably his friends did not want him to write it.

Every story worth telling is a love story, said someone I used to love very much.

But that happens: writers who once meant everything don’t always thrill in the same way anymore.