Don’t You Wonder Sometimes, What Might Have

I Felt Slightly Superior To Student Politics, For Instance. I Had No Reason To Think This, But I Thought Of Myself As Slightly More Seasoned. I Became Quite Cynical Talking To My Student Friends.

I Was A Little Concerned That A Lot Of People Thought I Wrote Merchant Ivory Movies. I Also Thought If I Was Ever Going To Write Something Strange And Difficult, That Was The Time.

A Man Who Aspires To Rise Above The Mediocre, To Be Something More Than The Ordinary, Surely Deserves Admiration, Even If He Fails And Loses A Fortune On Account Of His Ambitions (...) If One Has Failed Only Where Others Have Not Had The Courage Or Will To Try, There Is Consolation - Indeed, Deep Satisfaction - To Be Gained From His Observation When Looking Back Over One's Life. #page No.134

Perhaps There Are Those Who Are Able To Go About Their Lives Unfettered By Such Concerns. But For Those Like Us, Our Fate Is To Face The World As Orphans, Chasing Through Long Years The Shadows Of Vanished Parents. There Is Nothing For It But To Try And See Through Our Missions To The End, As Best We Can, For Until We Do So, We Will Be Permitted No Calm.

Because Maybe, In A Way, We Didn't Leave It Behind Nearly As Much As We Might Once Have Thought. Because Somewhere Underneath, A Part Of Us Stayed Like That: Fearful Of The World Around Us, And No Matter How Much We Despised Ourselves For It--unable Quite To Let Each Other Go.