My Politics, And My Religion As Well,

I've Developed A Great Reputation For Wisdom By Ordering More Books Than I Ever Had Time To Read, And Reading More Books, By Far, Than I Learned Anything Useful From, Except, Of Course, That Some Very Tedious Gentlemen Have Written Books.

I Do Have An Impulse To Sort Of Leverage What I Say Against Something I Disagree With.

That Is How Life Goes--we Send Our Children Into The Wilderness. Some Of Them On The Day They Are Born, It Seems, For All The Help We Can Give Them. Some Of Them Seem To Be A Kind Of Wilderness Unto Themselves. But There Must Be Angels There, Too, And Springs Of Water. Even That Wilderness, The Very Habitation Of Jackals, Is The Lord's.

Of My Conception I Know Only What You Know Of Yours. It Occurred In Darkness And I Was Unconsenting... By Some Bleak Alchemy What Had Been Mere Unbeing Becomes Death When Life Is Mingled With It.

I Had Been Reading About [john] Calvin For Years And Had Been Studying The English Renaissance For Many More Years, And It Had Never Occurred To Me To Think Of Them Together. I Learned That Calvin Was The Most Widely Read Writer In England In Shakespeare's Lifetime. He Was Translated And Published In Many Editions.