To Be Left Alone Is The Most

If You Expect The Worst From A Person You Can Never Be Disappointed.

Life Is, Of Course, Terrible.

As We Are All Solipsists, And All Die, The World Dies With Us. Only Very Minor Literature Aims At Apocalypse.

There Is, In Fact, Not Much Point In Writing A Novel Unless You Can Show The Possibility Of Moral Transformation, Or An Increase In Wisdom, Operating In Your Chief Character Or Characters. Even Trashy Bestsellers Show People Changing. When A Fictional Work Fails To Show Change, When It Merely Indicates That Human Character Is Set, Stony, Unregenerable, Then You Are Out Of Field Of The Novel And Into That Of The Fable Or The Allegory. - From The Introduction Of The 1986 Norton Edition

This Is Great Art, We've Been Told This By The Great Pundits Of Our Age. And In Consequence Why Should We Bother To Learn? There's Nothing More Delightful Than To Be Told, 'you Don't Have To Learn, My Boy. There's Nothing In It. Modern Art? There's Nothing In It.