Love Removes The World For You, And

For Years And Years I Thought That Stories Were Just Practice, Till I Got Time To Write A Novel.

I Loved Taking Off. In My Own House, I Seemed To Be Often Looking For A Place To Hide - Sometimes From The Children But More Often From The Jobs To Be Done And The Phone Ringing And The Sociability Of The Neighborhood. I Wanted To Hide So That I Could Get Busy At My Real Work, Which Was A Sort Of Wooing Of Distant Parts Of Myself.

I Began To Understand That There Were Certain Talkers - Certain Girls - Whom People Liked To Listen To, Not Because Of What They, The Girls, Had To Say, But Because Of The Delight They Took In Saying It. A Delight In Themselves, A Shine On Their Faces, A Conviction That Whatever They Were Telling About Was Remarkable And That They Themselves Could Not Help But Give Pleasure. There Might Be Other People - People Like Me - Who Didn't Concede This, But That Was Their Loss. And People Like Me Would Never Be The Audience These Girls Were After, Anyway.

Love Removes The World For You, And Just As Surely When It's Going Well As When It's Going Badly.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Gently Down The Stream. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life Is But A Dream.