True Solitude Is A Din

The Zest For Life Of Those Unusual Men And Women Who Make A Great Zealous Success Of Living Is Due More Often In Good Part To The Craftiness And Pertinacity With Which They Manage To Overlook The Misery Of Others. You Can Watch Them Watch Life Beat The Stuffing Out Of The Faces Of Their Friends And Acquaintances, Although They Themselves Seem To Outwit The Dense Delays Of Social Custom, The Tedious Tick-tock Of Bureaucratic Obfuscation, Accepting Loss And Age And Change And Disappointment Without Suffering Punctures In Their Stomach Lining.

If A Person Sings Quietly To Himself On The Street People Smile With Approval; But If He Talks It's Not Alright; They Think He's Crazy. The Singer Is Presumed To Be Happy And The Talker Unhappy.

There Is A Time Of Life Somewhere Between The Sullen Fugues Of Adolescence And The Retrenchments Of Middle Age When Human Nature Becomes So Absolutely Absorbing One Wants To Be In The City Constantly, Even At The Height Of Summer.

There Were Periods During My Childhood When I Stammered So Badly I Couldn't Talk At All.

City People Try To Buy Time As A Rule, When They Can, Whereas Country People Are Prepared To Kill Time, Although Both Try To Cherish In Their Mind's Eye The Notion Of A Better Life Ahead.