I Know From The Middle

My Wife Who Is Non-jewish Regrets It All The Time That I Can Say These Terrible Things About Fellow Jews And She Can't.

I Was Recently Asked What It Takes To Become A Writer. Three Things, I Answered: First, One Must Cultivate Incompetence At Almost Every Other Form Of Profitable Work. This Must Be Accompanied, Second, By A Haughty Contempt For All The Forms Of Work That One Has Established One Cannot Do. To These Two Must Be Joined, Third, The Nuttiness To Believe That Other People Can Be Made To Care About Your Opinions And Views And Be Charmed By The Way You State Them. Incompetence, Contempt, Lunacy—once You Have These In Place, You Are Set To Go.

What All Great Teachers Appear To Have In Common Is Love Of Their Subject, An Obvious Satisfaction In Rousing This Love In Their Students, And An Ability To Convince Them That What They Are Being Taught Is Deadly Serious

One Serious Drawback About Letters Is That, In Order To Get Them, One Must Send Some Out. When It Comes To The Mail, I Feel It Is Better To Receive Than To Give.

I Am Afraid I Am One Of Those People Who Continues To Read In The Hope Of Sometime Discovering In A Book A Single—and Singular—piece Of Wisdom So Penetrating, So Soul Stirring, So Utterly Applicable To My Own Life As To Make All The Bad Books I Have Read Seem Well Worth The Countless Hours Spent On Them. My Guess Is That This Wisdom, If It Ever Arrives, Will Do So In The Form Of A Generalization.