It's Easy, After All, Not To Be

Wisdom Consists Partly In Not Pretending Anymore, In Discarding Artifice.

It Strikes Me That This May Be One Of The Differences Between Youth And Age: When We Are Young, We Invent Different Futures For Ourselves; When We Are Old, We Invent Different Pasts For Others.

The Writer's Life [is] Full Of Frailty And Defeat Like Any Other Life. What Counts Is The Work. Yet The Work Can Quite Easily Be Buried, Or Half-buried, By The Life.

Reading Is A Majority Skill But A Minority Art. Yet Nothing Can Replace The Exact, Complicated, Subtle Communion Between Absent Author And Entranced, Present Reader.

The Writer Has Little Control Over Personal Temperament, None Over Historical Moment, And Is Only Partly In Charge Of His Or Her Own Aesthetic.