The Surest Sign Of Age

These Are Our Few Live Seasons. Let Us Live Them As Purely As We Can, In The Present.

The Mountains Are Great Stone Bells; They Clang Together Like Nuns. Who Shushed The Stars? There Are A Thousand Million Galaxies Easily Seen In The Palomar Reflector; Collisions Between And Among Them Do, Of Course, Occur. But These Collisions Are Very Long And Silent Slides. Billions Of Stars Sift Amont Each Other Untouched, Too Distant Even To Be Moved, Heedless As Always, Hushed. The Sea Pronounces Something, Over And Over, In A Hoarse Whisper; I Cannot Quite Make It Out. But God Knows I Have Tried.

Cruelty Is A Mystery, And The Waste Of Pain. But If We Describe A Word To Compass These Things, A World That Is A Long, Brute Game, Then We Bump Against Another Mystery: The Inrush Of Power And Delight, The Canary That Sings On The Skull.

Writing A Book Is Like Rearing Children -- Willpower Has Very Little To Do With It. If You Have A Little Baby Crying In The Middle Of The Night, And If You Depend Only On Willpower To Get You Out Of Bed To Feed The Baby, That Baby Will Starve. You Do It Out Of Love.

Write As If You Were Dying. At The Same Time, Assume You Write For An Audience Consisting Solely Of Terminal Patients. That Is, After All, The Case. What Would You Begin Writing If You Knew You Would Die Soon? What Could You Say To A Dying Person That Would Not Enrage By Its Triviality?