Living In A Small Town

A Writer Falls In Love With An Idea And Gets Carried Away.

I Have Kept Diaries, Of Course, But They Can't Be Read For Quite A Long Time. I'm Always Curious About People Who Are Fascinated By Writers' Lives. It Seems To Me That We're Always In Our Books, Quite Nakedly. I Wonder, Too, Does The Private Life Really Matter? Who Cares What Is Known About You And What Isn't? Even When You Make Public Something That's Been Private, Most People Don't Get It - Not Unless They're The Same Generation And Have Gone Through More Or Less The Same Experiences. So, In A Sense, We're All Private, By Definition.

Sometimes I Dislike Women, I Dislike Us All, Because Of Our Capacity For Not-thinking When It Suits Us; We Choose Not To Think When We Are Reaching Our For Happiness.

If She Had Been Left Alone She Would Have Gone On, In Her Own Way, Enjoying Herself Thoroughly, Until People Found One Day That She Had Turned Imperceptibly Into One Of Those Women Who Have Become Old Without Ever Having Been Middle Aged: A Little Withered, A Little Acid, Hard As Nails, Sentimentally Kindhearted, And Addicted To Religion Or Small Dogs.

The Smell Of Manure, Of Sun On Foliage, Of Evaporating Water, Rose To My Head; Two Steps Farther, And I Could Look Down Into The Vegetable Garden Enclosed Within Its Tall Pale Of Reeds - Rich Chocolate Earth Studded Emerald Green, Frothed With The White Of Cauliflowers, Jeweled With The Purple Globes Of Eggplant And The Scarlet Wealth Of Tomatoes.