It Could Be Argued That Every Age

Life, It Is True, Can Be Grasped In All Its Confused Futility Merely By Opening One's Eyes And Sitting Passively, A Spectator On The Stands Of History - But To Understand The Social Processes And Conflicts, The Interplay Between Individual And Group, Even The Physicality Of Human Experience, We Have Need Of Small-scale Models.

To Attempt To Write Seriously Is Always, I Feel, To Fail - The Disjunction Between My Beautifully Sonorous, Accurate And Painfully Affecting Mental Content, And The Leaden, Halting Sentences On The Page Always Seems A Dreadful Falling Short.

A Short Story Is A Shard, A Sliver, A Vignette. It's A Biopsy On The Human Condition But It Doesn't Have This Capacity To Think Autonomously For Itself.

This Is The Paradox For Me: In Failure Alone Is There Any Possibility Of Success. I Don't Think I'm Alone In This - Nor Do I Think It's An Attitude That Only Prevails Among People Whose Work Is Obviously "creative".

I Think I Now Understand Why It Is That The Young Are So Very Nostalgic. They Have So Little By Way Of Personal History That They Polish It Up And Make It Shine Like A Treasured Heirloom.