I Measure My Life Out In Books."

As My Wise Friend Didi Has More Than Once Observed About Life's Passages, Every Departure Entails An Arrival Elsewhere, Every Arrival Implies A Departure From Afar.

The Professor Husband Of A Friend Of Mine Has Likened Children To The Insane. I Often Think Of It. He Says That Children Live On The Edge Of Madness, That Their Behavior, Apparently Unmotivated, Shares The Same Dream Logic As Crazy People's. I See What He Means, And Because I've Learned To Be Patient With Children, To Tease Out The Logic That's Always Somewhere There, And Irrefutable Once Explained.

The Apartment Was Entirely, Was Only, For Her: A Wall Of Books, Both Read And Unread, All Of Them Dear To Her Not Only In Themselves, Their Tender Spines, But In The Moments Or Periods They Evoked… Her Self, Then, Was Represented In Her Books; Her Times In Her Records; And The Rest Of The Room She Thought Of As A Pure, Blank Slate.

Above All, In My Anger, I Was Sad. Isn't That Always The Way, That At The Heart Of The Fire Is A Frozen Kernel Of Sorrow That The Fire Is Trying -- Valiantly, Fruitlessly -- To Eradicate.

The More Accurately One Can Illuminate A Particular Human Experience, The Better The Work Of Art.