A Jewish Man With Parents

You Go To Someone And You Think, 'i'll Tell Him This.' But Why? The Impulse Is That The Telling Is Going To Relieve You. And That's Why You Feel Awful Later--you've Relieved Yourself, And If It Truly Is Tragic And Awful, It's Not Better, It's Worse---the Exhibitionism Inherent To A Confession Has Only Made The Misery Worse.

Nothing Has A More Sinister Effect On Art Than The Artist's Desire To Prove That He's Good. The Terrible Temptation Of Idealism! You Must Achieve Mastery Over Your Idealism, Over Your Virtue As Well As Over Your Vice, Aesthetic Mastery Over Everything That Drives You To Write In The First Place - Your Outrage, Your Politics, Your Grief, Your Love!

A Father For Whom Everything Is An Unshakable Duty, For Whom There Is A Right Way And A Wrong Way And Nothing In Between, A Father Whose Compound Of Ambitions, Biases, And Beliefs Is So Unruffled By Careful Thinking That He Isn’t As Easy To Escape From As He Seems. Limited Men With Limitless Energy; Men Quick To Be Friendly And Quick To Be Fed Up; Men For Whom The Most Serious Thing In Life Is To Keep Going Despite Everything. And We Were Their Sons. It Was Our Job To Love Them.

The Secret To Living In The Rush Of The World With A Minimum Of Pain Is To Get As Many People As Possible To String Along With Your Delusions; The Trick To Living Alone Up Here, Away From All Agitating Entanglements, Allurements, And Expectations, Apart Especially From One's Own Intensity, Is To Organize The Silence, To Think Of Its Mountaintop Plenitude As Capital, Silence As Wealth Exponentially Increasing. The Encircling Silence As Your Chosen Source Of Advantage And Your Only Intimate.

This Is What You Know About Someone You Have To Hate: He Charges You With His Crime And Castigates Himself In You.