My Father Was In The First World

This Is A Time When It Is Frightening To Be Alive, When It Is Hard To Think Of Human Beings As Rational Creatures. Everywhere We Look We See Brutality, Stupidity, Until It Seems That There Is Nothing Else To Be Seen But That--a Descent Into Barbarism, Everywhere, Which We Are Unable To Check. But I Think That While It Is True There Is A General Worsening, It Is Precisely Because Things Are So Frightening We Become Hypnotized, And Do Not Notice--or If We Notice, Belittle--equally Strong Forces On The Other Side, The Forces, In Short, Of Reason, Sanity And Civilization.

Writers Do Not Come Out Of Houses Without Books.

The Freedom Of Women Was Achieved By Two Things: One, The Pill. Two... By Labour-saving Devices Like The Washing Machine. By Science, Not Feminism.

There Is Only One Way To Read, Which Is To Browse In Libraries And Bookshops, Picking Up Books That Attract You, Reading Only Those, Dropping Them When They Bore You, Skipping The Parts That Drag-and Never, Never Reading Anything Because You Feel You Ought, Or Because It Is Part Of A Trend Or A Movement. Remember That The Book Which Bores You When You Are Twenty Or Thirty Will Open Doors For You When You Are Forty Or Fifty-and Vise Versa. Don’t Read A Book Out Of Its Right Time For You.

If You Understand Something, You Don't Forgive It, You Are The Thing Itself: Forgiveness Is For What You Don't Understand.