It Was Such A Pleasure

In Retrospect, It Seems Like Everything In My Life Led To Me Becoming A Writer. I Just Didn't Realise It At The Time.

Wars Make History Seem Deceptively Simple. They Provide Clear Turning Points, Easy Distinctions.: Before And After, Winner And Loser, Right And Wrong. True History, The Past, Is Not Like That. It Isn't Flat Or Linear. It Has No Outline. It Is Slippery, Like Liquid; Infinite And Unknowable, Like Space. And It Is Changeable: Just When You Think You See A Pattern, Perspective Shifts, An Alternate Version Is Proffered, A Long-forgotten Memory Resurfaces.

Even The Most Pragmatic Person Fell Victim At Times To A Longing For Something Other.

Mother Didn't Understand That Children Aren't Frightened By Stories; That Their Lives Are Full Of Far More Frightening Things Than Those Contained In Fairy Tales.

True Love, It's Like An Illness. I Never Understood It Before. In Books And Plays. Poems. I Never Understood What Drove Otherwise Intelligent, Right-thinking People To Do Such Extravagant, Irrational Things. Now I Do. It's An Illness. You Can Catch It When You Least Expect. There's No Known Cure. And Sometimes, In Its Most Extreme, It's Fatal.