If The Book Is A Mystery To

David Grossman May Be The Most Gifted Writer I've Ever Read. [to The End Of The Land Is] Powerful, Shattering, And Unflinching. To Read It Is To Have Yourself Taken Apart, Undone, Touched At The Place Of Your Own Essence.

I Read Like An Animal. I Read Under The Covers, I Read Lying In The Grass, I Read At The Dinner Table. While Other People Were Talking To Me, I Read.

He Held My Hand And Told Me A Story About When He Was Six And Threw A Rock At A Kid's Head Who Was Bullying His Brother, And How After That No One Had Bothered Either Of Them Again. 'you Have To Stick Up For Yourself,' He Told Me. 'but It's Bad To Throw Rocks,' I Said. 'i Know. You're Smarter Than Me. You'll Find Something Better Than Rocks.

The Clarity Was Startling And Samson Wondered Whether He Was Imagining These Moments. Not That They Hadn't Happened At All, But That They Had Been Embellished By Details From Elsewhere, Fragments That Survived The Obliteration Of Other Memories, Vagrant Data That Gravitated And Stuck To What Was Left To Remember. But In The End He Rejected This Idea. The Memories Were Too Perfect: Take One Detail Away And They Collapsed Into Disorder.

Now That Mine Is Almost Over, I Can Say That The One Thing That Struck Me Most About Life Is The Capacity For Change. One Day You're A Person And The Next Day They Tell You You're A Dog. At First It's Hard To Bear, But After A While You Learn Not To Look At It As A Loss. There's Even A Moment When It Becomes Exhilarating To Realize Just How Little Needs To Stay The Same For You To Continue The Effort They Call, For Lack Of A Better Word, Being Human.