A Man Is Never More His Single

The Only Excuse For A Novelist, Aside From The Entertainment And Vicarious Living His Books Give The People Who Read Them, Is As A Sort Of Second-class Historian Of The Age He Lives In. The "reality" He Missed By Writing About Imaginary People, He Gains By Being Able To Build A Reality More Nearly Out Of His Own Factual Experience Than A Plain Historian Or Biographer Can.

I Dont Think There Is Anything On Earth More Wonderful Than Those Wistful Incomplete Friendships One Makes Now And Then In An Hour's Talk. You Never See The People Again, But The Lingering Sense Of Their Presence In The World Is Like The Glow Of An Unseen City At Night--makes You Feel The Teemingness Of It All.

It Has Been The Struggle Between Privileged Men Who Have Managed To Get Hold Of The Levers Of Power And The People In General Withtheir Vague And Changing Aspirations For Equality, For Justice, For Some Kind Of Gentler Brotherhood And Peace, Which Has Kept That Balance Of Forces We Call Our System Of Government In Equilibrium.

There's Something Wonderfully Exciting About The Quiet Sing Song Of An Aeroplane Overhead With All The Guns In Creation Lighting Out At It, And Searchlights Feeling Their Way Across The Sky Like Antennae, And The Earth Shaking Snort Of The Bombs And The Whimper Of Shrapnel Pieces When They Come Down To Patter On The Roof.

The Business Of A Novelist Is, In My Opinion, To Create Characters First And Foremost, And Then To Set Them In The Snarl Of The Human Currents Of His Time, So That There Results An Accurate Permanent Record Of A Phase Of History.