A Light Snow, A Snow So Faint

In General, American Life Is More Easy-going. And Civic Pride, National Pride In A Cultural Sense, Is Great In America. I Think What They Esteem In America Is Character And Energy, And Being Different And Superior To Other Peoples. Of Course, Every Nation Feels Itself To Be Superior, But In America It's A Jaunty Feeling, And In Some Cases A Rather Ominous One Among The Super-patriots.

In 1957, I Decided: Write Or Perish.

The Normal Economic System Works Itself.

The Book Was In Her Lap; She Had Read No Further. The Power To Change One’s Life Comes From A Paragraph, A Lone Remark. The Lines That Penetrate Us Are Slender, Like The Flukes That Live In River Water And Enter The Bodies Of Swimmers. She Was Excited, Filled With Strength. The Polished Sentences Had Arrived, It Seemed, Like So Many Other Things, At Just The Right Time. How Can We Imagine What Our Lives Should Be Without The Illumination Of The Lives Of Others?

I'm Tired Of My Life, My Clothes, The Things I Say. I'm Hacking Away At The Surface, As At Some Kind Of Gray Ice, Trying To Break Through To What Is Underneath Or I Am Dead. I Can Feel The Surface Trembling—it Seems Ready To Give But It Never Does. I Am Uninterested In Current Events. How Can I Justify This? How Can I Explain It? I Don't Want To Have The Same Vocabulary I've Always Had. I Want Something Richer, Broader, More Penetrating And Powerful.