We Are Not By Nature Cruel.

It’s Admirable, What You Do, What She Does, But To Me Animal-welfare People Are A Bit Like Christians Of A Certain Kind. Everyone Is So Cheerful And Well-intentioned That After A While You Itch To Go Off And Do Some Raping And Pillaging. Or To Kick A Cat.

His Mouth Opens. From Inside Him Comes A Slow Stream, Without Breath, Without Interruption. It Flows Up Through His Body And Out Upon Me; It Passes Through The Cabin, Through The Wreck; Washing The Cliffs And Shores Of The Island, It Runs Northward And Southward To The Ends Of The Earth. Soft And Cold, Dark And Unending, It Beats Against My Eyelids, Against The Skin Of My Face.

But It Is The Knowledge Of How Contingent My Unease Is, How Dependent On A Baby That Wails Beneath My Window One Day And Does Not Wail The Next, That Brings The Worst Shame To Me, The Greatest Indifference To Annihilation. I Know Somewhat Too Much; And From This Knowledge, Once One Has Been Infected, There Seems To Be No Recovering. I Ought Never To Have Taken My Lantern To See What Was Going On In The Hut By The Granary. On The Other Hand, There Was No Way, Once I Had Picked Up The Lantern, For Me To Put It Down Again. The Knot Loops In Upon Itself; I Cannot Find The End.

In Its Conception The Literature Prize Belongs To Days When A Writer Could Still Be Thought Of As, By Virtue Of His Or Her Occupation, A Sage, Someone With No Institutional Affiliations Who Could Offer An Authoritative Word On Our Times As Well As On Our Moral Life.

He Continues To Teach Because It Provides Him With A Livelihood; Also Because It Teaches Him Humility, Brings It Home To Him Who He Is In The World. The Irony Does Not Escape Him: That The One Who Comes To Teach Learns The Keenest Of Lessons, While Those Who Come To Learn Learn Nothing.