[b]Jeanette Winterson
I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things you must risk it.[/b]
You know, if you dare.
Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l’oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people’s psychology with my own.
Fortunately [or unfortunately] that’s all quite normal.
There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what’s dead. It won’t complain.
You tell me: Is that good to know?
I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.
And not just Nazis.
There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.
So, Mr. Objectivist, do you?
It’s only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself.
Unless of course it’s the other way around.