Winter Lies Too Long In

Every Individual Taste, Every Natural Appetite, Was Bridled By Caution. The People Asleep In Those Houses, I Thought, Tried To Live Like The Mice In Their Own Kitchens; To Make No Noise, To Leave No Trace, To Slip Over The Surface Of Things In The Dark.

The Great Fact In Life, The Always Possible Escape From Dullness, Was The Lake. The Sun Rose Out Of It, The Day Began There; It Was Like An Open Door That Nobody Could Shut. The Land And All Its Dreariness Could Never Close In On You. You Had Only To Look At The Lake, And You Knew You Would Soon Be Free.

Writing Ought Either To Be The Manufacture Of Stories For Which There Is A Market Demand - A Business As Safe And Commendable As Making Soap Or Breakfast Foods - Or It Should Be An Art, Which Is Always A Search For Something For Which There Is No Market Demand, Something New And Untried, Where The Values Are Intrinsic And Have Nothing To Do With Standardized Values.

Elsewhere The Sky Is The Roof Of The World; But Here The Earth Was The Floor Of The Sky.

It Has Long Been A Tradition Among Novel Writers That A Book Must End By Everybody Getting Just What They Wanted, Or If The Conventional Happy Ending Was Impossible, Then It Must Be A Tragedy In Which One Or Both Should Die. In Real Life Very Few Of Us Get What We Want, Our Tragedies Don't Kill Us, But We Go On Living Them Year After Year, Carrying Them With Us Like A Scar On An Old Wound.