Call Me the Fool

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." - I'm the fool who refuses to believe that only the reference to the worst of times is real at any given moment.

bookplate in my copy of A Tale of Two Cities

"He (James Hadley Chase, author of No Orchids for Miss Blandish) is a popular writer  - there are many such in America, but they are still rarities in England -who has caught up with what is now fashionable to call "realism", meaning the doctrine that might is right. The growth of "realism" has been the great feature of the intellectual history of our own age. The interconnection between sadism, masochism, success-worship, nationalism, and totalitarianism is a huge subject whose edges have barely been scratched, and even to mention it is considered somewhat indelicate." George Orwell Raffles and Miss Blandish