When The Beginnings Of Self Destruction Enter

There Is A Terrible Sameness To The Euphoria Of Alcohol And The Euphoria Of Metaphor.

If There Is Anybody I Detest, It Is Weak-minded Sentimentalists-all Those Melancholy People Who, Out Of An Excess Of Sympathy For Others, Miss The Thrill Of Their Own Essence And Drift Through Life Without Identity, Like A Human Fog, Feeling Sorry For Everyone.

For These Are Not As They Might Seem To Be, The Ruins Of Our Civilization, But Are Temporary Encampment And Outposts Of The Civilization That We - You And I - Shall Build.

When I Remember My Family, I Always Remember Their Backs. They Were Always Indignantly Leaving Places.

Who Reads Short Stories? One Is Asked, And I Like To Think That They Are Read By Men And Women In The Dentist's Office, Waiting To Be Called To The Chair; They Are Read On Transcontinental Plane Trips Instead Of Watching Banal And Vulgar Films Spin Out The Time Between Our Coasts; They Are Read By Discerning And Well-informed Men And Women Who Seem To Feel That Narrative Fiction Can Contribute To Our Understanding Of One Another And The Sometimes Bewildering World Around Us.