All That We Don't Know Is Astonishing.

It's Human To Have A Secret, But It's Just As Human To Reveal It Sooner Or Later.

You Go To Someone And You Think, 'i'll Tell Him This.' But Why? The Impulse Is That The Telling Is Going To Relieve You. And That's Why You Feel Awful Later--you've Relieved Yourself, And If It Truly Is Tragic And Awful, It's Not Better, It's Worse---the Exhibitionism Inherent To A Confession Has Only Made The Misery Worse.

I Kept Waiting For Him To Lay Bare Something More Than This Pointed Unobjectionableness, But All That Rose To The Surface Was More Surface

When You Decide 'to Be A Writer,' You Don't Have The Faintest Idea Of What The Work Is Like. When You Begin, You Write Spontaneously Out Of Your Limited Experience Of Both The Unwritten World And The Written World. You're Full Of Naïve Exuberance. 'i Am A Writer!' Rather Like The Excitement Of 'i Have A Lover!' But Working At It Nearly Every Day For Fifty Years – Whether It Is Being The Writer Or Being The Lover – Turns Out To Be An Extremely Taxing Job And Hardly The Pleasantest Of Human Activities.

Fear Presides Over These Memories, A Perpetual Fear.of Course No Childhood Is Without Its Terrors, Yet I Wonder If I Would Have Been A Less Frightened Boy If Lindbergh Hadn't Been President Or If I Hadn't Been The Offspring Of Jews.