We Use Our Parents Like

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.

A Public Library Is The Most Democratic Thing In The World. What Can Be Found There Has Undone Dictators And Tyrants: Demagogues Can Persecute Writers And Tell Them What To Write As Much As They Like, But They Cannot Vanish What Has Been Written In The Past, Though They Try Often Enough...people Who Love Literature Have At Least Part Of Their Minds Immune From Indoctrination. If You Read, You Can Learn To Think For Yourself.

In Shanghai, I Saw Great Contrasts. On One Street There Would Be Impressive Shops Selling Copies Of The Latest Word In Glamorous European Fashion, And Around The Corner On A Back Street There Were Poor Families Crammed Into One Room With A Naked Light Bulb. One Evening I Heard A Chinese Family Singing "happy Birthday." It Was Weird. You Would Have Thought That They'd Have Their Own Happy Birthday Song. Every Dominant Society In The World - Whether It's French Or British Or American - Imposes Its Culture On Less Developed Societies.

I Am So Happy To Be Communicating With People On This Newest Of New Wavelengths Which To Some Older People Must Seem Like A Kind Of Magic.

The Whole Process Of Writing Is A Setting At A Distance. That Is The Value Of It - To The Writer, And To The People Who Read The Results Of This Process, Which Takes The Raw, The Individual, The Uncriticized, The Unexamined, Into The Realm Of The General.