I Spent Many Years Of My Life

God Save Us From People Who Mean Well.

Those Books Of Mine That Are Remunerative - I'm Not Talking About Poetry Here - Take Years To Write, And I Am Never Sure They'll Be Successful. So Writing Is A Risk In More Senses Than One.

Music, Such Music, Is A Sufficient Gift. Why Ask For Happiness; Why Hope Not To Grieve? It Is Enough, It Is To Be Blessed Enough, To Live From Day To Day And To Hear Such Music-not Too Much, Or The Soul Could Not Sustain It-from Time To Time.

And The Process Of Reading Is Such A Private One. I Once Came Into A Room Where A Friend Of Mine Was Reading One Of My Books, And He Clicked His Tongue Impatiently And Shooed Me Off.

Behind Every Door On Every Ordinary Street, In Every Hut In Every Ordinary Village In This Middling Planet Of A Trivial Star, Such Riches Are To Be Found. The Strange Journeys We Undertake On Our Earthly Pilgrimage, The Joy And Suffering We Taste Or Confer, The Chance Events That Leave Us Together Or Apart, What A Complex Trace They Leave: So Personal As To Be Almost Incommunicable, So Fugitive As To Be Almost Irrecoverable.