Gossip, Or, As We Gossips Like To

The Greatest Gift Is A Passion For Reading. It Is Cheap, It Consoles, It Distracts, It Excites, It Gives You Knowledge Of The World And Experience Of A Wide Kind. It Is A Moral Illumination.

A Letter Is Not A Dialogue Or Even An Omniscient Exposition. It Is A Fabric Of Surfaces, A Mask, A Form As Well Suited To Affectations As To The Affections. The Letter Is, By Its Natural Shape, Self-justifying; It Is One's Own Evidence, Deposition, A Self-serving Testimony. In A Letter The Writer Holds All The Cards, Controls Everything About Himself And About Those Assertions He Wishes To Make Concerning Events Or The Worth Of Others. For Completely Self-centered Characters, The Letter Form Is A Complex And Rewarding Activity.

Memory - The Very Skin Of Life.

[on Sociability In Italy:] You May Be A Hermit Or An Innkeeper.

Sex Can No Longer Be The Germ, The Seed Of Fiction. Sex Is An Episode, Most Properly Conveyed In An Episodic Manner, Quickly, Often Ironically. It Is A Bursting Forth Of Only One Of The Cells In The Body Of The Omnipotent I, The One Who Hopes By Concentration Of Tone And Voice To Utter The Sound Of Reality.