I'm A Complete Democrat In Terms Of

Do We Tend To Recall The Most Important Parts Of A Novel Or Those That Speak Most Directly To Us, The Truest Lines Or The Flashiest Ones?

In My Terms, I Settled For The Realities Of Life, And Submitted To Its Necessities: If This, Then That, And So The Years Passed. In Adrian's Terms, I Gave Up On Life, Gave Up On Examining It, Took It As It Came. And So, For The First Time, I Began To Feel A More General Remorse - A Feeling Somewhere Between Self-pity And Self-hatred - About My Whole Life. All Of It. I Had Lost The Friends Of My Youth. I Had Lost The Love Of My Wife. I Had Abandoned The Ambitions I Had Entertained. I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

He Had A Better Mind And A More Rigorous Temperament Than Me; He Thought Logically, And Then Acted On The Conclusion Of Logical Thought. Whereas Most Of Us, I Suspect, Do The Opposite: We Make An Instinctive Decision, Then Build Up An Infrastructure Of Reasoning To Justify It. And Call The Result Common Sense.

The Writer Has Little Control Over Personal Temperament, None Over Historical Moment, And Is Only Partly In Charge Of His Or Her Own Aesthetic.

He Feared Me As Many Men Fear Women: Because Their Mistresses (or Their Wives) Understand Them. They Are Scarcely Adult, Some Men: They Wish Women To Understand Them, And To That End They Tell Them All Their Secrets; And Then, When They Are Properly Understood, They Hate Their Women For Understanding Them.