And I Knew That It

The Thing To Do Is To Exploit The Meaning Of The Life You Have.

Many Of The Rites Of Passage, Those Rituals Of Growing Up Found In Our Society, Are In The Form Of Such Comic, Practical Joking Affairs--which We Ignore In The Belief That They Possess No Deeper Significance. Yet It Is Precisely In Their Being Regarded As Unimportant That They Take On Importance. For In Them We Ritualize And Dramatize Attitudes Which Contradict And Often Embarrass The Sacred Values Which We Proclaim Through Our Solemn Ceremonies And Rituals Of Nationhood.

That Which We Remember Is, More Often Than Not, That Which We Would Like To Have Been; Or That Which We Hope To Be. Thus Our Memory And Our Identity Are Ever At Odds; Our History Ever A Tale Told By Inattentive Idealists.

All Novels Are About Certain Minorities: The Individual Is A Minority. The Universal In The Novel-and Isn't That What We're All Clamoring For These Days?-is Reached Only Through The Depiction Of The Specific Man In A Specific Circumstance.

Education Is All A Matter Of Building Bridges.