When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrati...ng inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue. The immediacy delivers... quick company, instant stimulation; the stimulation is cathartic; catharsis pushes back anxiety; into open space flows the kind of thought generated by electric return. The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith; it assumes the presence of humanity; world and self are generated from within; loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room. I alone infuse the silence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When cafe life thrives, talk is a shared limberness of the mind that improves appetite for conversation: an adequate sentence make...r is then made good, a good one excellent, an excellent one extraordinary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thirty-five years ago, when I was a college student, people wrote letters. The businessman who read, the lawyer who traveled; the ...dressmaker in evening school, my unhappy mother, our expectant neighbor: all conducted an often large and varied correspondence. It was the accustomed way of ordinarily educated people to occupy the world beyond their own small and immediate lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time when I had not yet grasped th...e significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew--and I knew it was important to know--that Papa worked hard all day long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life, from beginning to end, is fear. Yes, it is pain, yes, it is desire, but more than anything it is fear; a certain amount rati...onal, an enormous amount irrational. All political cruelties stem from that overwhelming fear. To push back the threatening forces, to offer primitive sacrifices, to give up some in the hope that others will be saved ... that is the power struggle. That is the outsidedness of the poor, the feeble, the infantile. That is the outsidedness of Jews. That is the outsidedness of blacks. That is the outsidedness of women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »