I Don't Do All That Well In

E.b. White's Essays Are The Best Things I've Read About Maine - Especially The One In Which He's Not Sure If He Can Go Out Sailing Any More In His Sloop.

I Certainly Felt I Had An Idea Of World War Ii, And It's Probably The Idea That Many People Share: There Was This Insane Aggressor, And There Was Really Only One Way To Proceed In Resisting Him. What I Didn't Realize Is That There Were Many Voices Belonging To Reasonable, Interesting, Complicated People Who Had A Different Way Of Interpreting The Possible Responses To The Hitlerian Menace.

As Soon As You Start Doing That - Changing Things - It Seems Self-evident To Me That You've Entered The World Of Make-believe. If You Pretend That It's True, And Use Your Own Name, You Are Misleading People. Fiction Is Looser And Wilder And Sometimes In The End More Self-revealing, Anyway.

The Great Thing About Novels Is That You Can Be As Unshy As You Want To Be. I'm Very Polite In Person. I Don't Want To Talk About Startling Or Upsetting Things With People.

History Isn't A Seesaw. If You Have A Really Bad Regime On One Side, The Actions On The Other Side Don't Automatically Become Good. It Doesn't Work That Way.