Elizabeth Hardwick
I am alone here in New York, no longer a we.
Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work and lead this life, the one I am leading today. Each morning the blue clock and the crocheted bedspread, the table with the Phone, the books and magazines, the Times at the door.
I often think about bachelors, a life of pure decision, of thoughtful calculations, of every inclination honored. They go about on their own, nicely accompanied in their singularity by the companion of possibility. For cannot any man, young or old, rich or poor, turn a few corners and bump into marriage?
Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel—and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or she.
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
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