...and Yet I Am What They Think

All Novels Are About Certain Minorities: The Individual Is A Minority. The Universal In The Novel-and Isn't That What We're All Clamoring For These Days?-is Reached Only Through The Depiction Of The Specific Man In A Specific Circumstance.

At Best Americans Give But A Limited Attention To History. Too Much Happens Too Rapidly, And Before We Can Evaluate It, Or Exhaust Its Meaning Or Pleasure, There Is Something New To Concern Us. Ours Is The Tempo Of The Motion Picture, Not That Of The Still Camera, And We Waste Experience As We Wasted The Forest.

That Which We Remember Is, More Often Than Not, That Which We Would Like To Have Been; Or That Which We Hope To Be. Thus Our Memory And Our Identity Are Ever At Odds; Our History Ever A Tale Told By Inattentive Idealists.

And My Problem Was That I Always Tried To Go In Everyone's Way But My Own.

America Is Woven Of Many Strands; I Would Recognize Them And Let It So Remain. It's 'winner Take Nothing' That Is The Great Truth Of Our Country Or Of Any Country. Life Is To Be Lived, Not Controlled; And Humanity Is Won By Continuing To Play In Face Of Certain Defeat. Our Fate Is To Become One, And Yet Many - This In Not Prophecy, But Description.