Kaze-Chan

Some five years back, the editors of yet another antholody for school readers put together a volume, with some 400 (count'em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled w

The king sighed in resignation. Standing before Teleus, he said, "Teleus, the Guard made the queen. The Guard can unmake her. You can guarantee their loyalty now, but can you guarantee it twenty years from now? Forty years from now? You know you can't, yet you would entrust that Guard ten years, fifteen years, thirty years from now, with the power of kingmakers. Sooner or later the Guard's loyalty will be bought and sold like other men's, and the crown will go to the highest bidder. That is the course of history, Teleus. It is unchangeable. Keeping a private guard this larger is like using a wolf to guard the farm. It may keep off the other w

How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that! The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde