[my Early Stories] Are The Work Of

As A Novelist, I Cannot Occupy Myself With "characters," Or At Any Rate Central Ones, Who Lack Panache, In One Or Another Sense, Who Would Be Incapable Of A Major Action Or A Major Passion, Or Who Have Not A Touch Of The Ambiguity, The Ultimate Unaccountability, The Enlarging Mistiness Of Persons "in History." History, As More Austerely I Now Know It, Is Not Romantic. But I Am.

This, My First [bicycle] Had An Intrinsic Beauty. And It Opened For Me An Era Of All But Flying, Which Roads Emptily Crossing Theairy, Gold-gorsy Common Enhanced. Nothing Since Has Equalled That Birdlike Freedom.

Imagination Of My Kind Is Most Caught, Most Fired, Most Worked Upon By The Unfamiliar: I Have Thrivenon The Changes And Chances, The Dislocations Andcontrasts Which Have Made Up So Much Of My Life.

Dress Has Never Been At All A Straightforward Business: So Much Subterranean Interest And Complex Feeling Attaches To It. As A Topic ... It Has A Flowery Head But Deep Roots In The Passion. On The Subject Of Dress Almost No One, For One Or Another Reason, Feels Truly Indifferent: If Their Own Clothes Do Not Concern Them, Somebody Else's Do. ... Ten Minutes Talk About Clothes (except Between Perfect Friends) Tends To Make Everyone Present Either Overbearing, Guarded Or Touchy.

The Child Lives In The Book; But Just As Much The Book Lives In The Child.