One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer. ↗
We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries. ↗
And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity. ↗
After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now? ↗
As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity. ↗
At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all. ↗
Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves. ↗
Politics disappears; it vanishes. What remains constant is human life. So I try to develop a perspective in my writing where politics is just one of the pieces of furniture in this furnished world. It is not the purpose. It is not the goal. ↗
