You Learn A Lot, Writing

I Believe That The Experience Of Childhood Is Irretrievable. All That Remains, For Any Of Us, Is A Headful Of Brilliant Frozen Moments, Already Dangerously Distorted By The Wisdoms Of Maturity.

I Have Long Been Interested In Landscape History, And When Younger And More Robust I Used To Do Much Tramping Of The English Landscape In Search Of Ancient Field Systems, Drove Roads, Indications Of Prehistoric Settlement. Towns And Cities, Too, Which Always Retain The Ghost Of Their Earlier Incarnations Beneath Today's Concrete And Glass.

All I Know For Certain Is That Reading Is Of The Most Intense Importance To Me; If I Were Not Able To Read, To Revisit Old Favorites And Experiment With Names New To Me, I Would Be Starved - Probably Too Starved To Go On Writing Myself.

Unless I Am A Part Of Everything I Am Nothing.

The Past Is Our Ultimate Privacy; We Pile It Up, Year By Year, Decade By Decade, It Stows Itself Away, With Its Perverse Random Recall System.