But that isn't my life. I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years - more - to writing.

ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.

But that isn't my life. I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years - more - to writing.

One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

As I look back, I see that life is like a game of solitaire and every once in a while there is a move.

WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back.