What They [critics Of Lessing's Switch To

September 11 Was Terrible, But If One Goes Back Over The History Of The Ira, What Happened To The Americans Wasn't That Terrible.

I Woke Up One Morning, And I Couldn't Move My Arm. It Was The Oddest Thing, The Paralysis. I Called Up A Friend And Said, "i Think I've Had A Stroke," And, In Fact, That's What My Doctor Told Me. It Wasn't Terrible, But It Was Enough To Scare Me. Now I Think About Death All The Time. I Have My Death Arm, My Right Arm.

Why Were The Europeans Bothered About The Soviet Union At All? It Was Nothing To Do With Us. China Had Nothing To Do With Us. Why Were We Not Building, Without Reference To The Soviet Union, A Good Society In Our Own Countries? But No, We Were All - In One Way Or Another - Obsessed With The Bloody Soviet Union, Which Was A Disaster. What People Were Supporting Was Failure. And Continually Justifying It.

I Think People Are Always Looking For Gurus. It's The Easiest Thing In The World To Become A Guru. It's Quite Terrifying. I Once Saw Something Fascinating Here In New York. It Must Have Been In The Early Seventies--guru Time. A Man Used To Go And Sit In Central Park, Wearing Elaborate Golden Robes. He Never Once Opened His Mouth, He Just Sat. He'd Appear At Lunchtime. People Appeared From Everywhere, Because He Was Obviously A Holy Man, And This Went On For Months. They Just Sat Around Him In Reverent Silence. Eventually He Got Fed Up With It And Left. Yes. It's As Easy As That.

Most Novels, If They Are Successful At All, Are Original In The Sense That They Report The Existence Of An Area Of Society, A Type Of Person, Not Yet Admitted To The General Literate Consciousness.