I Hated Being A Novelist When I

…words Have Been All My Life, All My Life--this Need Is Like The Spider's Need Who Carries Before Her A Huge Burden Of Silk Which She Must Spin Out--the Silk Is Her Life, Her Home, Her Safety--her Food And Drink Too--and If It Is Attacked Or Pulled Down, Why, What Can She Do But Make More, Spin Afresh, Design Anew….

The Individual Appears For An Instant, Joins The Community Of Thought, Modifies It And Dies; But The Species, That Dies Not, Reaps The Fruit Of His Ephemeral Existence.

Books That Change You, Even Later In Life, Give You A Kind Of Electrical Shock As The World Takes A Different Shape.

The Minds Of Stone Lovers Had Colonised Stones As Lichens Clung To Them With Golden Or Grey-green Florid Stains. The Human World Of Stones Is Caught In Organic Metaphors Like Flies In Amber. Words Came From Flesh And Hair And Plants. Reniform, Mammilated, Botryoidal, Dendrite, Haematite. Carnelian Is From Carnal, From Flesh. Serpentine And Lizardite Are Stone Reptiles ; Phyllite Is Leafy-green.

Our Days Weave Together The Simple Pleasures Of Daily Life, Which We Should Never Take For Granted, And The Higher Pleasures Of Art And Thought Which We May Now Taste As We Please, With None To Forbid Or Criticise.