Michael Gruber

The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good.

There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.

There are life events that can destroy the personality, which is a lot more fragile than most people imagine, constructed as it is from bits provided by others in the most haphazard way. People can be torn down to the core, "shattered," as the expression goes, and then they seek sleep. And dreams, which provide the ground for the construction of a new and more integrated self. Providing there's a core, and providing they're willing to do the work.

But it turns out that people who are grounded and secure don't change much under stress. That's what being grounded means.

Farid, you are keeping a hawk; don't expect her to lay eggs like a chicken.

Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession, their madness is less often remarked.

Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?

When I got to the States and started going to an American high school, which I did for an extremely short time, I thought everyone around me was insane, the way they talked about their parents. I thought the parents were insane too, the way they handled their kids, like every request they made was a bargain they weren't sure would be kept. That little whiny tone at the end of every statement: "Be home by ten, okay?