One Of The Troubles Is This: The

In Those Days, We Imagined Ourselves As Being Kept In Some Kind Of Holding Pen, Waiting To Be Released Into Our Lives. And When The Moment Came, Our Lives -- And Time Itself -- Would Speed Up. How Were We To Know That Our Lives Had In Any Case Begun, That Some Advantage Had Already Been Gained, Some Damage Already Inflicted? Also, That Our Release Would Only Be Into A Larger Holding Pen, Whose Boundaries Would Be At First Undiscernible.

Reading Is A Majority Skill But A Minority Art. Yet Nothing Can Replace The Exact, Complicated, Subtle Communion Between Absent Author And Entranced, Present Reader.

In My Terms, I Settled For The Realities Of Life, And Submitted To Its Necessities: If This, Then That, And So The Years Passed. In Adrian's Terms, I Gave Up On Life, Gave Up On Examining It, Took It As It Came. And So, For The First Time, I Began To Feel A More General Remorse - A Feeling Somewhere Between Self-pity And Self-hatred - About My Whole Life. All Of It. I Had Lost The Friends Of My Youth. I Had Lost The Love Of My Wife. I Had Abandoned The Ambitions I Had Entertained. I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

Love May Not Lead Where We Think Or Hope, But Regardless Of Outcome It Should Be A Call To Seriousness And Truth. If It Is Not That - If It Is Not Moral In Its Effect - Then Love Is No More Than An Exaggerated Form Of Pleasure.

I'm A Complete Democrat In Terms Of Who Buys My Books.