To Walk Into History Is

What Is A Novel? I Say: An Invented Story. At The Same Time A Story Which, Though Invented Has The Power To Ring True. True To What? True To Life As The Reader Knows Life To Be Or, It May Be, Feels Life To Be. And I Mean The Adult, The Grown-up Reader. Such A Reader Has Outgrown Fairy Tales, And We Do Not Want The Fantastic And The Impossible. So I Say To You That A Novel Must Stand Up To The Adult Tests Of Reality.

Knowledge Of Rome Must Be Physical, Sweated Into The System, Worked Up Into The Brain Through The Thinning Shoe-leather. ... When It Comes To Knowing, The Senses Are More Honest Than The Intelligence. Nothing Is More Real Than The First Wall You Lean Up Against Sobbing With Exhaustion. Rome No More Than Beheld (that Is, Taken In Through The Eyes Only) Could Still Be A Masterpiece In Cardboard - The Eye I Suppose Being Of All The Organs The Most Easily Infatuated And Then Jaded And So Tricked. Seeing Is Pleasure, But Not Knowledge.

She Had One Of Those Charming Faces Which, According To The Angle From Which You See Them, Look Either Melancholy Or Impertinent. Her Eyes Were Grey; Her Trick Of Narrowing Them Made Her Seem To Reflect, The Greater Part Of The Time, In The Dusk Of Her Second Thoughts. With That Mood, That Touch Of Arriere Pensee, Went An Uncertain, Speaking Set Of Lips.

Ghosts Seem Harder To Please Than We Are; It Is As Though They Haunted For Haunting’s Sake -- Much As We Relive, Brood, And Smoulder Over Our Pasts.

Whenever Possible I Avoid Talking. Reprieve From Talking Is My Idea Of A Holiday. At Risk Of Seeming Unsociable, Which I Am, I Admit I Love To Be Left In A Beatific Trance, When I Am In One. Friendly Romans Recognize That Wish.