Europe And North America, We Are Told,

The Rise To Prominence Of The Saudi Novel In Arabic Is The Great Man-bites-dog Of Recent World Literature. Saudi Arabia Is A Country Without A Free Press, Where European Styles And Forms Are Distrusted And Where The Female Half Of The Population Became Literate Only In This Generation.

If Good History Is Dispassionate History, It Must Naturally Wait Until The Passions Of The Period Subside.

Nature Is Not Simply A Technical Or Economical Resource, And Human Beings Are Not Mere Numbers. To Suggest That One Can Somehow Align All The Squabbling Institutions Of Science, Environmental Management, Government And Diplomacy In An Alliance Of Convenience To Regulate The Global Climate Seems To Me Optimistic.

My Belief, For What It Is Worth, Is That City Dwellers Cannot Understand The World. Insulated From Reality By Complex And Expert Systems Of Provision And Police, Baffled By Fashion And Spectacle, City Dwellers Can Distinguish Neither The Sources Of Their Existence Nor The Consequences.

To Make A Love Story, You Need A Couple Of Young People, But To Reflect On The Nature Of Love, You're Better Off With Old Ones. That Is A Fact Of Life And Literature - And Of The Novel Ever Since It Fell In Love With Love In The 18th Century.