Bed Is The Best Place For Reading,

If You Understand Something, You Don't Forgive It, You Are The Thing Itself: Forgiveness Is For What You Don't Understand.

In Shanghai, I Saw Great Contrasts. On One Street There Would Be Impressive Shops Selling Copies Of The Latest Word In Glamorous European Fashion, And Around The Corner On A Back Street There Were Poor Families Crammed Into One Room With A Naked Light Bulb. One Evening I Heard A Chinese Family Singing "happy Birthday." It Was Weird. You Would Have Thought That They'd Have Their Own Happy Birthday Song. Every Dominant Society In The World - Whether It's French Or British Or American - Imposes Its Culture On Less Developed Societies.

[the Golden Notebook] Was Not A Trumpet For Women's Liberation. It Described Many Female Emotions Of Aggression, Hostility, Resentment. It Put Them Into Print. Apparently What Many Women Were Thinking, Feeling, Experiencing, Came As A Great Surprise. Instantly A Lot Of Very Ancient Weapons Were Unleashed, The Main Ones, As Usual, Being On The Theme Of "she Is Unfeminine", "she Is A Man-hater".

What Of Course I Would Like To Be Writing Is The Story Of The Red And White Dwarves And Their Remembering Mirror, Their Space Rocket (powered By Anti-gravity), Their Attendant Entities Hadron, Gluon, Pion, Lepton, And Muon, And The Charmed Quarks And The Coloured Quarks. But We Can't All Be Physicists.

But There Is No Doubt That To Attempt A Novel Of Ideas Is To Give Oneself A Handicap: The Parochialism Of Our Culture Is Intense. For Instance, Decade After Decade Bright Young Men And Women Emerge From Their Universities Able To Say Proudly: 'of Course I Know Nothing About German Literature.' It Is The Mode. The Victorians Knew Everything About German Literature, But Were Able With A Clear Conscience Not To Know Much About The French.