Teachers Today Can't Take To A Child.

I Like To Imagine A Person's Psyche To Be Like A Boardinghouse Full Of Characters. The Ones Who Show Up Regularly And Who Habitually Follow The House Rules May Not Have Met Other Long-term Residents Who Stay Behind Closed Doors, Or Who Only Appear At Night. An Adequate Theory Of Character Must Make Room For Character Actors, For The Stuntmen And Animal Handlers, For All The Figures Who Play Bit Parts And Produce Unexpected Acts. They Often Make The Show Fateful, Or Tragic, Or Farcically Absurd.

There Is More In A Human Life Than Our Theories Of It Allow. Sooner Or Later Something Seems To Call Us Onto A Particular Path. You May Remember This "something" As A Signal Moment In Childhood When An Urge Out Of Nowhere, A Fascination, A Peculiar Turn Of Events Struck Like An Annunciation: This Is What I Must Do, This Is What I've Got To Have. This Is Who I Am.

Economics Is A Slave-driver. No One Has Free Time; No One Has Any Leisure.

When They Talk About Family Values, It's In A Repressive Way, As If Our American Tradition Were Only The Puritan Tradition Or The 19th Century Oppressive Tradition. The Christian Tradition.

The Greek Idea Of Fate Is Moira, Which Means "portion." Fate Rules A Portion Of Your Life. But There Is More To Life Than Just Fate. There Is Also Genetics, Environment, Economics, And So On. So It's Not All Written In The Book Before You Get Here, Such That You Don't Have To Do Anything. That's Fatalism.