The art of living in a small town is one of the most difficult to acquire.

But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of very emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it's a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: "You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do."

What is charm then? The free giving of a grace, the spending of something given by nature in her role of spendthrift ... something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away.

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.