Literature Illuminates Life Only For

For Reasons Not Always At The Time Explicable, There Are Specific Occasions When Events Begin Suddenly To Take On A Significance Previously Unsuspected, So That, Before We Really Know Where We Are, Life Seems To Have Begun In Earnest At Last, And We Ourselves, Scarcely Aware That Any Change Has Taken Place, Are Careering Uncontrollably Down The Slippery Avenues Of Eternity.

On The Stage . . . Masks Are Assumed With Some Regard To Procedure; In Everyday Life, The Participants Act Their Parts Without Consideration Either For Suitability Of Scene Or For The Words Spoken By The Rest Of The Cast: The Result Is A General Tendency For Things To Be Brought To The Level Of Farce Even When The Theme Is Serious Enough.

People Think That Because A Novel's Invented, It Isn't True. Exactly The Reverse Is The Case. Biography And Memoirs Can Never Be Wholly True, Since They Cannot Include Every Conceivable Circumstance Of What Happened. The Novel Can Do That.

Writing Is Above All A Question Of Instinct.

When People Really Hate One Another, The Tension Within Them Can Sometimes Make Itself Felt Throughout A Room, Like Atmospheric Waves, First Hot, Then Cold, Wafted Backwards And Forwards As If In An Invisible Process Of Air Conditioning, Creating A Pervasive Physical Disturbance.