If Anything Might Hurt Her, Silence Would;

People Who Teach You Cram Old Ideas, Old Views, Old Ways, Into You. Like Covering Plants With Layer After Layer Of Old Earth; It's No Wonder The Poor Things So Rarely Come Up Fresh And Green.

In Some Mysterious Way Woods Have Never Seemed To Me To Be Static Things. In Physical Terms, I Move Through Them; Yet In Metaphysical Ones, They Seem To Move Through Me.

Whatever Sympathy I Feel Towards Religions, Whatever Admiration For Some Of Their Adherents, Whatever Historical Or Biological Necessity I See In Them, Whatever Metaphorical Truth, I Cannot Accept Them As Credible Explanations Of Reality; And They Are Incredible To Me In Proportion To The Degree That They Require My Belief In Positive Human Attributes And Intervenient Powers In Their Divinities.

I Have A Strange Illusion Quite Often. I Think I've Become Deaf. I Have To Make A Little Noise To Prove I'm Not. I Clear My Throat To Show Myself That Everything Is Normal. It's Like The Little Japanese Girl They Found In The Ruins Of Hiroshima. Everything Dead; And She Was Singing To Her Doll.

I Was Too Green To Know That All Cynicism Masks A Failure To Cope - An Impotence, In Short; And That To Despise All Effort Is The Greatest Effort Of All.