The Best Essays Come From The Moment

The Loss Of Seriousness Seems To Me To Be, In Effect, A Loss Of Hope. I Think That The Thing That Made People Rise To Real Ambition, Real Gravity Was The Sense Of Posterity, For Example - A Word That I Can Remember Hearing Quite Often When I Was A Child And I Never Hear Anymore. People Actually Wanted To Make The World Good For People In Generations That They Would Never See. It Makes People Think In Very Large Terms To Try To Liberate Women, For Example, Or To Try To Eliminate Slavery.

I Think The Attempt To Defend Belief Can Unsettle It, In Fact, Because There Is Always An Inadequacy In Argument About Ultimate Things.

I've Developed A Great Reputation For Wisdom By Ordering More Books Than I Ever Had Time To Read, And Reading More Books, By Far, Than I Learned Anything Useful From, Except, Of Course, That Some Very Tedious Gentlemen Have Written Books.

Fiction That Does Not Acknowledge This At Least Tacitly Is Not True.

I Have Found That The Characters In My Novels Stay With Me After A Book Has Ended. I Know Them In Some Sense. I Never Map Anything Out. I Just Think Until I Am Secure In The Voice Of One Of Them, And Then Let The Character Unfold.