We Were Born To Die; We Were

In 1952, I Had Gone To England On A Literary Pilgrimage, But What I Also Saw, Even At That Distance From The Blitz, Were Bombed-out Ruins And An Enervated Society, While The Continent Was Still, Psychologically, In The Grip Of Its Recent Atrocities.

Is There A Word More Passionate Than Passion? Obsession, Total Immersion, The Feeling That Everything Else Doesn't Matter.

Nothing Is So Awesomely Unfamiliar As The Familiar That Discloses Itself At The End Of A Journey. Nothing Shakes The Heart So Much As Meeting-far, Far Away-what You Last Met At Home.

I'm Not Afraid Of Facts, I Welcome Facts But A Congeries Of Facts Is Not Equivalent To An Idea. This Is The Essential Fallacy Of The So-called "scientific" Mind. People Who Mistake Facts For Ideas Are Incomplete Thinkers; They Are Gossips.

I Measure My Life In Sentences Pressed Out, Line By Line, Like The Lustrous Ooze On The Underside Of The Snail, The Snail's Secret Open Seam, Its Wound, Leaking Attar.