I Kept Waiting For Him To Lay

The Horror Of Being Caged Has Lost Its Thrill.

You Asked If I Thought My Fiction Had Changed Anything In The Culture And The Answer Is No. Sure, There's Been Some Scandal, But People Are Scandalized All The Time; It's A Way Of Life For Them. It Doesn't Mean A Thing. If You Ask If I Want My Fiction To Change Anything In The Culture, The Answer Is Still No. What I Want Is To Possess My Readers While They Are Reading My Book — If I Can, To Possess Them In Ways That Other Writers Don't. Then Let Them Return, Just As They Were, To A World Where Everybody Else Is Working To Change, Persuade, Tempt, And Control Them.

The Hard Part Is, Of Course, The Proximity Of Death. The Number Has No Meaning As Long As You're Fit And Healthy. But You Know That You Only Have So Much Time Left And You Don't Know How Much It Is. It Could Be A Very Short Time.

A Father For Whom Everything Is An Unshakable Duty, For Whom There Is A Right Way And A Wrong Way And Nothing In Between, A Father Whose Compound Of Ambitions, Biases, And Beliefs Is So Unruffled By Careful Thinking That He Isn’t As Easy To Escape From As He Seems. Limited Men With Limitless Energy; Men Quick To Be Friendly And Quick To Be Fed Up; Men For Whom The Most Serious Thing In Life Is To Keep Going Despite Everything. And We Were Their Sons. It Was Our Job To Love Them.

I Wouldn't Mind Writing A Long Book Which Is Going To Occupy Me For The Rest Of My Life.