My Life Looked Good On

Steven Pinker Says, The Invention Of Printing And The Widespread Appearance Of Fiction - This Taught Empathy. If You Read A Novel, You're In Someone Else's Head, In Three, Five Different People's Heads. Suddenly, The Principle Of "don't Do Anything To Anyone That You Wouldn't Want Done To You" Becomes Real In People's Minds. That's A Fantastic Achievement If Fiction Is Indeed Partly Responsible For It. That's A Great Thing To Be A Part Of. In The End, Then, I Don't Know If Writers Have Legislated, But They Have Civilized.

The Thing Is That I Am A Member Of That Sad, Ever-dwindling Minority... The Child Of An Unbroken Home. I Have Carried This Albatross Since The Age Of Eleven, When I Started At Grammar School. Not A Day Would Pass Without Somebody I Knew Turning Out To Be Adopted Or Illegitimate, Or To Have Mothers Who Were About To Hare Off With Some Bloke, Or To Have Dead Fathers And Shabby Stepfathers. What Busy Lives They Led. How I Envied Their Excuses For Introspection, Their Ear-marked Receptacles For Every Just Antagonism And Noble Loyalty.

Writers Spend Too Much Time Among Dead Things. I Thought That Was Profound And Actually True, That You're Trying To Pump Life Into Something That Is Inanimate. You See What A Sort Of Audacious Thing It Is To Move These Sort Of Imaginary People Around In A Very Stylized And Patterned World.

The Champions Of Militant Islam Are, Of Course, Misogynists, Woman-haters; They Are Also Misologists - Haters Of Reason. Their Armed Doctrine Is Little More Than A Chaotic Penal Code Underscored By Impotent Dreams Of Genocide. And, Like All Religions, It Is A Massive Agglutination Of Stock Response, Of Cliches, Of Inherited And Unexamined Formulations.

Never Content Just To Be, America Is Also Obliged To Mean; America Signifies, Hence Its Constant And Riveting Vulnerability To Illusion.