It's True, Reading Too Many Novels Makes

People Pontificate, "suicide Is Selfishness." Career Churchmen Like Pater Go A Step Further And Call In A Cowardly Assault On The Living. Oafs Argue This Specious Line For Varying Reason: To Evade Fingers Of Blame, To Impress One's Audience With One's Mental Fiber, To Vent Anger, Or Just Because One Lacks The Necessary Suffering To Sympathize. Cowardice Is Nothing To Do With It - Suicide Takes Considerable Courage. Japanese Have The Right Idea. No, What's Selfish Is To Demand Another To Endure An Intolerable Existence, Just To Spare Families, Friends, And Enemies A Bit Of Soul-searching.

Writing Is Probably One-fifth Coming Up With The Stuff, And Four-fifths Self-editing Again And Again And Again.

Time Is What Stops History Happening At Once; Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Disappears.

Three Or Four Times Only In My Youth Did I Glimpse The Joyous Isles, Before They Were Lost To Fogs, Depressions, Cold Fronts, Ill Winds, And Contrary Tides... I Mistook Them For Adulthood. Assuming They Were A Fixed Feature In My Life's Voyage, I Neglected To Record Their Latitude, Their Longitude, Their Approach. Young Ruddy Fool. What Wouldn't I Give Now For A Never-changing Map Of The Ever-constant Ineffable? To Possess, As It Were, An Atlas Of Clouds.

For Me, Novels Coalesce Into Being, Rather Than Arrive Fully Formed.