“Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.”
The Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: I'm an American, and always will be. I happen to love that big, awkward, sprawling country very much — and its big, awkward, sprawling people. Anyway, I don't like politics; and I don't make "political gestures," as you call it. I don't even believe in politics. To me, politics is like one of those annoying, and potentially dangerous (but generally just painful) chronic diseases that you just have to put up with in your life if you happen to have contracted it. Politics is like having diabetes. It's a science, a catch-as-catch-can science, which has grown up out of simple animal necessity more than anything else. If I were twice as big as I am, and twice as physically strong, I think I'd be a total anarchist. As it is, since I'm physically a pretty little guy... no, in fact, one reason I left was because I believe it is good for an American writer to get outside his country — outside his continent — and see it from a vantage point outside its pervading emotional climate.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 396.
It was an odd looking thing. I couldn't say 'Oh, it looks like you' because that would be a diss.
Podcast Series 2 Episode 2
On Medicine
Source: The Burning Page (2016), Chapter 24 (p. 322)
Context: “I have spent most of my life preferring books to people,” Irene said sharply. “Just because I like a few specific people doesn’t change anything.”
“I love people who have a good sense of humor, tell a good story, tell a good joke.”
General Conference, October, 1958
Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), pp. 9-10
She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”
Part III, Chapter VIII (p. 299)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)
