Within the Heiberg's charmed circle

Meet the ten people I didn't have over for dinner last night.

I'd made the Swedish meatballs I'd bought at IKEA, two packages of them in case anyone wanted seconds.

How did it happen that I ended up in the bathtub alone, trying to stay cool on a warm summer night, drinking tequila?

Well, it seems I don't come to conclusions, conclusions come to me.

I don't need to read books to have something to talk about at dinner, like most people. I already know that fiction, the best fiction, makes the strangeness of our lives, however strange they may be, ordinary enough for us to understand. Real fiction performs its opposite by being truer to life than life itself so that it's not fiction anymore but a shining path we can listen to and trust.

I'd read in the bathtub if I could, but the books always end up getting wet. So I think about books instead, and how much I'm enjoying reading the stories of Lucia Berlin and Thomas Fuller.

People seem to have a difficult time leaving my little dinner parties; they tend to overstay, to the point where I'm forced to develop subtle strategies to politely dismiss them without them realizing they've been dismissed.

Just before I say a final goodnight to my guests I come to the conclusion that you either find people you like being with or you convert them so that they become people you like being with.