I Got Four Volumes Of The Letters

We Have Opted For Petty Determinisms - Childhood Trauma, Genetic Inheritance, Social Conditioning, Etc. - That Have Made Us Comparatively Passive. We Seem To Prefer To Find Excuses - Which Are Really Nothing More Than The Embrace Of Determinism, A Sort Of Stockholm Syndrome Relative To Whatever We Can Claim As Limitation. I Am Fascinated By The More Enabling Self-understanding. It Has Helped Me To Find My Way Out Of The Cloying Comforts That Are Offered By Prevalent Psychological Models.

People Talk About How Wonderful The World Seems To Children, And That's True Enough. But Children Think They Will Grow Into It And Understand It, And I Know Very Well That I Will Not, And Would Not If I Had A Dozen Lives.

Many Times When I Stop Working On A Problem Consciously, My Mind Continues To Work On It Below The Surface. Often Solutions Come On Me Quite By Surprise. I've Learned Over Time To Allow That To Happen, Rather Than To Feel That I Can Simply Solve The Problem By Continuous, Grueling Effort.

Two Questions I Can't Really Answer About Fiction Are 1) Where It Comes From, And 2) Why We Need It. But That We Do Create It And Also Crave It Is Beyond Dispute.

And There Is No Living Creature, Though The Whims Of Eons Had Put Its Eyes On Boggling Stalks And Clamped It In A Carapace, Diminished It To A Pinpoint And Given It A Taste For Mud And Stuck It Down A Well Or Hid It Under A Stone, But That Creature Will Live On If It Can.