Is it a coincidence that stories from the private life became more popular just as the grand hope for public redemption through revolution was beginning to sour? I witnessed a similar shift in taste in my own time. In the 1960s, while a hopeful vision of a just society arose again, countless poems and plays concerning politics and public life were written, read, and performed. But after the hope diminished and public life seemed less and less trustworthy, this subject was less in style.

Yes we are devilish; that is true we cackle. Yes we are dark like the soil and wild like the animals. And we turn to each other and stare into this darkness. We find it beautiful. We find this darkness irresistible. We cease all hiding.

One can find traces of every life in each life.

What always seems miraculous is when aesthetic necessities yield an insight which otherwise I would have missed.

What is buried in the past of one generation falls to the next to claim.

War starts in the mind, not in the body.

In one sense I feel that my book is a one-woman argument against determinism.