Though Life's Tuition Is Always Ruinous, Inexorably

I Don't See How Anybody Starts A Novel Without Knowing How It's Going To End. I Usually Make Detailed Outlines: How Many Chapters It Will Be And So Forth.

My Dear Fellow,' Burlingame Said, 'we Sit Here On A Blind Rock Careening Through Space; We Are All Of Us Rushing Headlong To The Grave. Think You The Worms Will Care, When Anon They Make A Meal Of You, Whether You Spent Your Moment Sighing Wigless In Your Chamber, Or Sacked The Golden Towns Of Montezuma? Lookee, The Day's Nigh Spent; 'tis Gone Careening Into Time Forever. Not A Tale's Length Past We Lined Our Bowels With Dinner, And Already They Growl For More. We Are Dying Men, Ebenezer: I'faith, There's Time For Naught But Bold Resolves!

A Curious Thing About Written Literature: It Is About Four Thousand Years Old, But We Have No Way Of Knowing Whether Four Thousand Years Constitutes Senility Or The Maiden Blush Of Youth.

To Turn Experience Into Speech - That Is, To Classify, To Categorize, To Conceptualize, To Grammarize, To Syntactify It - Is Always A Betrayal Of Experience, A Falsification Of It; But Only So Betrayed Can It Be Dealt With At All, And Only In So Dealing With It Did I Ever Feel A Man, Alive And Kicking.

Is Man A Savage At Heart, Skinned O'er With Fragile Manners? Or Is Savagery But A Faint Taint In The Natural Man's Gentility, Which Erupts Now And Again Like Pimples On An Angel's Arse?