If I Were Sufficiently Romantic I Suppose

Women Hock Their Jewels And Their Husbands' Insurance Policies To Acquire An Unaccustomed Shade In Hair Or Crêpe De Chine. Why Then Is It That When Anyone Commits Anything Novel In The Arts He Should Be Always Greeted By This Same Peevish Howl Of Pain And Surprise? One Is Led To Suspect That The Interest People Show In These Much Talked Of Commodities, Painting, Music, And Writing, Cannot Be Very Deep Or Very Genuine When They So Wince Under An Unexpected Impact.

A Novel Is A Commodity That Fulfills A Certain Need; People Need To Buy Daydreams Like They Need To Buy Ice Cream Or Aspirin Or Gin. They Even Need To Buy A Pinch Of Intellectual Catnip Now And Then To Liven Up Their Thoughts.

Experiments In The Visual Arts (the Invention Of New Ways Of Seeing Things), Are Made Because, Due To The Way The Apparatus That Makes Up The Mind Is Made, Old Processes And Patterns Have Continually To Be Broken Up In Order To Make It Possible To Perceive The New Aspects And Arrangements Of Evolving Consciousness. The Great Enemy Of Intelligence Is Complacency.

To Fight Oppression, And To Work As Best We Can For A Sane Organization Of Society, We Do Not Have To Abandon The State Of Mind Offreedom. If We Do That We Are Letting The Same Thuggery In By The Back Door That We Are Fighting Off In Front Of The House.

It's Easy To Forget How Central The French People Are In Everything We Mean When We Say Europe.