Favorite Stories

I’ve been writing stories at The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1985. Here are 20 of my favorites. Click here to browse through them. To read the full story, click on the title of the except. And Enjoy!

And these 20 do not include the series that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. To read that series, click here

Other Favorites:

Rich coffee, with just a trace of cream

A cold Sam Adams beer.

A great low hand in poker

Watching baseball on a beautiful summer night, not too hot

Hitting a baseball, that wonderful moment of contact, and making a running catch in center field. (These are memories now, but linger!)

A bowl of Chocolate ice cream.

Sticking my face in my little dog’s face.

The moment when I’ve reported a story completely, and I sit down to write, and the story is bursting from my fingertips.

Coaching kids.

Hitting a beautiful backhand in tennis.

Swimming the individual medley. I’m slow, with poor form.

The novel Lonesome Dove

The story, Mazie, by Joseph Mitchell

The movie Good Will Hunting

Frank Capra movies

Sacred Music (A surprise, I know.)

My family.

My friends.

Giving talks about my book or my craft

Willie Mays, Walt Frazier, Bobby Orr, and Calvin Hill, back when I was a boy.

Hard work.

Relaxation.

My life.

This quote, from William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1950, refusing to believe man is doomed to nuclear destruction:

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. “