I Believe That Reality Is Vastly Richer

Characters More Or Less Present Themselves To Me. I Don't Know Their Origins. I Think If I Did, If I Seemed To Myself To Fabricate Them, I Could Not Induce Suspension Of Disbelief In Myself In The Way Writing Fiction Requires.

And There Is No Living Creature, Though The Whims Of Eons Had Put Its Eyes On Boggling Stalks And Clamped It In A Carapace, Diminished It To A Pinpoint And Given It A Taste For Mud And Stuck It Down A Well Or Hid It Under A Stone, But That Creature Will Live On If It Can.

Having A Sister Or A Friend Is Like Sitting At Night In A Lighted House. Those Outside Can Watch You If They Want, But You Need Not See Them. You Simply Say, "here Are The Perimeters Of Our Attention. If You Prowl Around Under The Windows Till The Crickets Go Silent, We Will Pull The Shades. If You Wish Us To Suffer Your Envious Curiosity, You Must Permit Us Not To Notice It." Anyone With One Solid Human Bond Is That Smug, And It Is The Smugness As Much As The Comfort And Safety That Lonely People Covet And Admire.

When Things Are Taking Their Ordinary Course, It Is Hard To Remember What Matters.

Isaac Watts, Of Course, Is A Hymn Writer In The Tradition Of Congregationalism Who Lived In The Seventeenth And Early Eighteenth Century. He Is Very Interesting And Important Because He Was Also A Metaphysician. He Knew A Great Deal About What Was, For Him, Contemporary Science. He Was Very Much Influenced By Isaac Newton, For Example. There Are Planets And Meteors And So On Showing Up In His Hymns Very Often. But, Again, The Scale Of His Religious Imagination Corresponds To A Very Generously Scaled Scientific Imagination.