Better Questions
We are…outcasts in this city. O there is no conspiracy against us, no pressures are brought to bear on us, we are free to come and go, to congregate, to hatch plots even, if we wish; we are - he shrugged - free. But what does it signify, this objectless freedom? Only that we are not feared.
"Everything interesting begins with one person in one place, though the places can become many, and many persons in the form of influences will have gone into the making of that single woman or man. No one comes out of nowhere; one room or town or locality can be made into an everywhere. The universal is the local, but with the walls taken away. Out of the particular we come on what is general, which is our great comfort, since we call it truth, and that truth has to be continually renewed. What is general and true has to be found again. If we resort to what is already general in this quest, all we are likely to find is the stale air of the imitative."
John McGahern
