I Have An Instinct For Survival, For

Life … Is A Bit Like Reading. … If All Your Responses To A Book Have Already Been Duplicated And Expanded Upon By A Professional Critic, Then What Point Is There To Your Reading? Only That It’s Yours. Similarly, Why Live Your Life? Because It’s Yours. But What If Such An Answer Becomes Less And Less Convincing?

If A Man Cannot Tell What He Wants To Do, Then He Must Find Out What He Ought To Do. If Desire Has Become Complicated, Then Hold Fast To Duty.

You Would Think, Wouldn’t You, That If You Were The Child Of A Happy Marriage, Then You Ought To Have A Better Than Average Marriage Yourself – Either Through Some Genetic Inheritance Or Because You’d Learnt From Example? But It Doesn’t Seem To Work Like That. So Perhaps You Need The Opposite Example – To See Mistakes In Order Not To Make Them Yourself. Except This Would Mean That The Best Way For Parents To Ensure Their Children Have Happy Marriages Would Be To Have Unhappy Ones Themselves. So What’s The Answer?

Sometimes I Think The Purpose Of Life Is To Reconcile Us To Its Eventual Loss By Wearing Us Down, By Proving, However Long It Takes, That Life Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be.

And That Was All The Part Of It - The Way You Were Obliged To Live. You Stifled A Groan, You Lied About Your Love, You Deceived Your Legal Wife, And All In The Name Of Honour. That Was The Damned Paradox Of It - In Order To Behave Well, You Have To Behave Badly.