It Is Our Stories That

Mostly Getting Old Is Boring. I Hate The Stiffness In The Bones. I Was Physically Arrogant For Years. I Don't Like It Now That I Have Difficulty Getting Around. But A Certain Equanimity Sets In, A Certain Detachment. Things Seem Less Desperately Important Than They Once Did, And That's A Pleasure.

In Times Of War, As Everyone Knows, Who Has Lived Through One, Or Talked To Soldiers When They Are Allowing Themselves To Remember The Truth, And Not The Sentimentalities With Which We All Shield Ourselves From The Horrors Of Which We Are Capable ... In Times Of War We Revert, As A Species, To The Past, And Are Permitted To Be Brutal And Cruel. It Is For This Reason, And Of Course Others, That A Great Many People Enjoy War. But This Is One Of The Facts About War That Is Not Often Talked About.

Most Novels, If They Are Successful At All, Are Original In The Sense That They Report The Existence Of An Area Of Society, A Type Of Person, Not Yet Admitted To The General Literate Consciousness.

Women Are The Cowards They Are Because They Have Been Semi-slaves For So Long. The Number Of Women Prepared To Stand Up For What They Really Think, Feel, Experience, With A Man They Are In Love With Is Still Very Small.

But Children Can't Be A Center Of Life And A Reason For Being. They Can Be A Thousand Things That Are Delightful, Interesting, Satisfying, But They Can't Be A Well-spring To Live From. Or They Shouldn't Be.