It Is Literature Which For Me Opened

I Had Become A Kind Of Information Magpie, Gathering To Myself All Manner Of Shiny Scraps Of Fact And Hokum And Books And Art-history And Politics And Music And Film, And Developing, Too, A Certain Skill In Manipulating And Arranging These Pitiful Shards So That They Glittered And Caught The Light. Fool's Gold, Or Priceless Nuggets Mined From My Singular Childhood's Rich Bohemian Seam? I Leave It To Others To Decide.

In Spite Of All Evidence That Life Is Discontinuous, A Valley Of Rifts, And That Random Chance Plays A Great Part In Our Fates, We Go On Believing In The Continuity Of Things, In Causation And Meaning. But We Live On A Broken Mirror, And Fresh Cracks Appear In Its Surface Every Day.

There Is A Point Beyond Which Conciliation Looks Like Capitulation. I Do Not Believe I Passed That Point, But Others Have Thought Otherwise.

Freedom Is Not A Tea Party, India. Freedom Is A War.

I Do Not Read The Works Of Salman Rushdie, I Write Them. By The Time I Have Finished Writing Them All I Can Think Of Is Never Reading Them Again. It's So Deep, Your Involvement With A Book, That Once It's Finished, Then You Are Really Done With It.