Life has a way of kicking one along like a football, or so I've found. Fate had never dealt me personally a particularly easy time, but that was OK, that was normal. Most people, it seemed to me, took their turn to be football. Most survived. Some didn't.

THE KNOWN CHILD I wondered to what extent people remained the same as they'd been when very young; if one peeled back the layers of living one would come to the known child.

Let an idea swim to the surface like a fish in a pool...let the mind drift to the vision.

Everyone journeys through character as well as through time. The person one becomes depends on the person one has been.

But one discarded dreams and got dressed, and made what one could of the day.

Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.

The dignity of man was everywhere tissue-paper thin.