I Think That One Is Constantly Startled

What You Fear Most Will Happen To You - That Is The Law.

When People Say Of Their Tragedies, 'i Don't Often Think Of It Now,' What They Mean Is It Has Entered Permanently Into Their Thoughts, And Colors Everything.

In The Circle Where I Was Raised, I Knew Of No One Knowledgeable In The Visual Arts, No One Who Regularly Attended Musical Performances, And Only Two Adults Other Than My Teachers Who Spoke Without Embarrassment Of Poetry And Literature — Both Of These Being Women. As Far As I Can Recall, I Never Heard A Man Refer To A Good Or A Great Book. I Knew No One Who Had Mastered, Or Even Studied, Another Language From Choice. And Our Articulate, Conscious Life Proceeded Without Acknowledgement Of The Preceding Civilisations Which Had Produced It.

Children Seldom Have A Proper Sense Of Their Own Tragedy, Discounting And Keeping Hidden The True Horrors Of Their Short Lives, Humbly Imagining Real Calamity To Be Some Prestigious Drama Of The Grown-up World.

Going To Europe, Someone Had Written, Was About As Final As Going To Heaven. A Mystical Passage To Another Life, From Which No-one Returned The Same. Those Returning In Such Ships Were Invincible, For They Had Managed It And Could Reflect Ever After On Anne Hathaway's Cottage Or The Tower Of London With A Confidence That Did Generate At Sydney. There Was Nothing Mythic At Sydney; Momentous Objects, Beings And Events All Occurred Abroad Or In The Elsewhere Of Books.