You Grew Old First Not

We Live With Such Easy Assumptions, Don't We? For Instance, That Memory Equals Events Plus Time. But It's All Much Odder Than This. Who Was It Said That Memory Is What We Thought We'd Forgotten? And It Ought To Be Obvious To Us That Time Doesn't Act As A Fixative, Rather As A Solvent. But It's Not Convenient--- It's Not Useful--- To Believe This; It Doesn't Help Us Get On With Our Lives; So We Ignore It.

In My Terms, I Settled For The Realities Of Life, And Submitted To Its Necessities: If This, Then That, And So The Years Passed. In Adrian's Terms, I Gave Up On Life, Gave Up On Examining It, Took It As It Came. And So, For The First Time, I Began To Feel A More General Remorse - A Feeling Somewhere Between Self-pity And Self-hatred - About My Whole Life. All Of It. I Had Lost The Friends Of My Youth. I Had Lost The Love Of My Wife. I Had Abandoned The Ambitions I Had Entertained. I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

The More You Learn, The Less You Fear. "learn" Not In The Sense Of Academic Study, But In The Practical Understanding Of Life.

When You Are Writing Fiction Your Task Is To Reflect The Fullest Complications Of The World

Novels Tell Us The Most Truth About Life: What It Is, How We Live It, What It Might Be For, How We Enjoy And Value It, And How We Lose It.