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A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. we all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. a letter captures the mood of the moment. the transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence.
-P. D. James
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A Letter Is Paradoxically The Most Revealing

P. D. James
A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. we all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. a letter captures the mood of the moment. the transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence.
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Prejudice Letters May

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Freedom is only to be found where there is burden to be shouldered. in creative achievements this burden always represents an imperative and a need that weighs heavily upon man’s mood, so that he comes to be in a mood of melancholy. all creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, whether we are clearly aware of the fact or not, whether we speak at length about it or not. all creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, but this is not to say that everyone in a melancholy mood is creative.
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Mood evidently affects the operation of system 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. these findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on system 1 form a cluster. at the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. a happy mood loosens the control of system 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.
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It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. the fixed is a mason jar,and we can't beat it open. ...the fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. it is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and i hate it because at any moment i myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.
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Darling, you asked me to write you a letter, so i am writing you a letter. i do not know why i am writing you this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about, but i am writing it nonetheless, because i love you very much and trust that you have some good purpose for having me write this letter. i hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love. your father
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A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. it is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. the letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. in a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. for completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.
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Lies about love we are all liars, because the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow, whereas letters are fixed, and we live by the letter of truth. the love i feel for my friend, this year, is different from the love i felt last year. if it were not so, it would be a lie. yet we reiterate love! love! love! as if it were a coin with fixed value instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.
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If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your history would become monotonous. but you must act with restraint. the world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.
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