Every Age Has A Keyhole To Which

The Present Can Try To Bury The Past, An Operation That Is Most Atrocious When It Is Most Successful.

... It Was Religion That Saved Me. Our Ugly Church And Parochial School Provided Me With My Only Aesthetic Outlet, In The Words Ofthe Mass And The Litanies And The Old Latin Hymns, In The Easter Lilies Around The Altar, Rosaries, Ornamented Prayer Books, Votive Lamps, Holy Cards Stamped In Gold And Decorated With Flower Wreaths And A Saint's Picture.

The Strongest Argument For The Un-materialistic Character Of American Life Is The Fact That We Tolerate Conditions That Are, From A Materialistic Point Of View, Intolerable. ... No Nation With Any Sense Of Material Well-being Would Endure The Food We Eat, The Cramped Apartments We Live In, The Noise, The Traffic, The Crowded Subways And Buses. American Life, In Large Cities, At Any Rate, Is A Perpetual Assault On The Senses And The Nerves.

As Soon As You Become A Writer, You Lose Contact With Ordinary Experience Or Tend To. ... The Worst Fate Of A Writer Is To Become A Writer.

Every Age Has A Keyhole To Which Its Eye Is Pasted. Spicy Court-memoirs, The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, Recollections Of An Ex-nun, A Monk's Confession, An Atheist's Repentance, True-to-life Accounts Of Prostitution And Bastardy Gave Our Ancestors A Penny Peep Into The Forbidden Room.