At this moment in history, many writers/readers, even the deep introverts among us, find ourselves wistful for people we know and don’t know, for crowds, festivals, the family on the next picnic blanket at the beach, literary festivals thick with subtext, game nights, dating, and family dinners, no matter how fraught. In this post, I thought I’d share a pair of people-watching paragraphs from a couple of beloved writers, Zadie Smith and E.M. Forster, both wonderful in their language and especially sharp and meticulous in their character portraits.