The Same Passage

Gregory Hays

b. 1963

His 2002 Meditations is celebrated for spare, modern, intensely quotable English.

Translations here

The reason Meditations is a bestseller again. Gregory Hays writes spare, direct, contemporary English that lands like something a person actually thought this morning. He is willing to be free where freedom serves clarity, breaking the text into crisp fragments, and his introduction is excellent. Scholars note he modernises and occasionally compresses, so it is not the version for close philological work. But as a book to read, mark up, and live with, nothing else comes close.