I Think Kids Ought To Travel. I

It Is Terrible To Destroy A Person's Picture Of Himself In The Interests Of Truth Or Some Other Abstraction.

You Know, When I Was A Girl, The Idea That The British Empire Could Ever End Was Absolutely Inconceivable. And It Just Disappeared, Like All The Other Empires.

All Sanity Depends On This: That It Should Be A Delight To Feel Heat Strike The Skin, A Delight To Stand Upright, Knowing The Bones Moving Easily Under The Flesh.

The Novel Has Become A Function Of The Fragmented Society, The Fragmented Consciousness. Human Beings Are So Divided, Are Becoming More And More Divided, And More Subdivided In Themselves, Reflecting The World, That They Reach Out Desperately, Not Knowing They Do It, For Information About Other Groups Inside Their Own Country, Let Alone About Groups In Other Countries. It Is A Blind Grasping Out For Their Own Wholeness, And The Novel-report Is A Means Toward It.

Sometimes I Pick Up A Book And I Say: Well, So You've Written It First, Have You? Good For You. O.k., Then I Won't Have To Write It.