It Was Nice Standing Out

Art Is A Form Of Exploration, Of Sailing Off Into The Unknown Alone, Heading For Those Unmarked Places On The Map. If Children Are Not Permitted-not Taught-to Be Adventurers And Explorers As Children, What Will Become Of The World Of Adventure, Of Stories, Of Literature Itself?

I Knew That I Shouldn’t Have, But I Did It All The Same; And There You Have My Epitaph, Or One Of Them, Because My Grave Is Going To Require A Monument Inscribed On All Four Sides With Rueful Mottoes, In Small Characters, Set Close Together.

The Midnight Disease Is A Kind Of Emotional Insomnia; At Ever Conscious Moment Its Victim—even If He Or She Writes At Dawn, Or In The Middle Of The Afternoon—feels Like A Person Lying In A Sweltering Bedroom, With The Window Thrown Open, Looking Up At A Sky Filled With Stars And Airplanes, Listening To The Narrative Of A Rattling Blind, An Ambulance, A Fly Trapped In A Coke Bottle, While All Around Him The Neighbours Soundly Sleep.

The Thing That Strikes Me Now When I Think About The Wilderness Of Childhood Is The Incredible Degree Of Freedom My Parents Gave Me To Adventure There. A Very Grave, Very Significant Shift In Our Idea Of Childhood Has Occurred Since Then. The Wilderness Of Childhood Is Gone; The Days Of Adventure Are Past. The Land Ruled By Children, To Which A Kid Might Exile Himself For At Least Some Portion Of Every Day From The Neighboring Kingdom Of Adulthood, Has In Large Part Been Taken Over, Co-opted, Colonized, And Finally Absorbed By The Neighbors.

Drunk, Jane Spoke As Though She Were Nancy Drew. I Was A Fool For A Girl With A Dainty Lexicon.