But Knowledge Does Not Protect One. Life Is Contemptuous Of Knowledge; It Forces It To Sit In The Anterooms, To Wait Outside. Passion, Energy, Lies: These Are What Life Admires. Still, Anything Can Be Endured If All Humanity Is Watching. The Martyrs Prove It. We Live In The Attention Of Others. We Turn To It As Flowers To The Sun.

-James Salter

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But Knowledge Does Not Protect One. Life

James Salter

But Knowledge Does Not Protect One. Life Is Contemptuous Of Knowledge; It Forces It To Sit In The Anterooms, To Wait Outside. Passion, Energy, Lies: These Are What Life Admires. Still, Anything Can Be Endured If All Humanity Is Watching. The Martyrs Prove It. We Live In The Attention Of Others. We Turn To It As Flowers To The Sun.

Topic

Lying

Flower

Passion

One Is Seduced And Battered In Turn. The Result Is Presumably Wisdom. Wisdom! We Are Clinging To Life Like Lizards. Why Is It So Difficult To Assemble Those Things That Really Matter In Life And To Dwell Among Them Only? I Am Referring To Certain Landscapes, Persons, Beasts, Books, Rooms, Meteorological Conditions, Fruits. In Fact, I Insist On It. A Letter Is Like A Poem, It Leaps Into Life And Shows Very Clearly The Marks, Perhaps I Should Say Thumbprints, Of An Unwilling Or Unready Composer.

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Letters