Over My Life As A Teacher, Women

Two Questions I Can't Really Answer About Fiction Are 1) Where It Comes From, And 2) Why We Need It. But That We Do Create It And Also Crave It Is Beyond Dispute.

That's One Good Thing About The Way Life Is, That No One Can Know You If You Don't Let Them.

I Have Always Liked The Phrase "nursing A Grudge " Because Many People Are Tender Of Their Resentments As Of The Thing Nearest Their Hearts.

Every Single One Of Us Is A Little Civilization Built On The Ruins Of Any Number Of Preceding Civilizations, But With Our Own Variant Notions Of What Is Beautiful And What Is Acceptable - Which, I Haste To Add, We Generally Do Not Satisfy And By Which We Struggle To Live.

Religion, If It Is Genuine, Is So Profoundly Interwoven With Individual Thought And Experience That It Is No More Exhaustible Than Consciousness Itself. And Fiction Whose Purpose Is Didactic Is Bad No Matter Whether The Matter To Be "taught" Is Christianity Or The World View Of Ayn Rand. It Seems Often To Be Assumed By Writers That Religion Is A Pose, Meant To Deceive Oneself Or Others, Or That It Is A Bad Patch On Doubt Or Complexity. This Is Only Convention, However. The Writers I Know Have A Much Deeper Engagement With The Real Issues Of Religion.