Knowing What I Now Know I Would

We Gave You A Perfectly Good Language And You F***ed Up.

Glory Never Arrives Through The Front Door. She Sneaks In Uninvited Round The Back Or Through An Upstairs Window While You Are Sleeping.

Great Writers, I Discovered, Were Not To Be Bowed Down Before And Worshipped, But Embraced And Befriended. Their Names Resounded Through History Not Because They Had Massive Brows And Thought Deep Incomprehensible Thoughts, But Because They Opened Windows In The Mind, They Put Their Arms Round You And Showed You Things You Always Knew But Never Dared To Believe. Even If Their Names Were Terrifyingly Foreign And Intellectual Sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire Or Cavafy, They Turned Out To Be Charming And Wonderful And Quite Unalarming After All.

I'm Afraid I Was Very Much The Traditionalist. I Went Down On One Knee And Dictated A Proposal Which My Secretary Faxed Over Straight Away.

Generally, We Admire The Thing We Are Not.