Field Observations

Field Observations: "Berry: In the first place, to try to imagine people who aren't born yet is inevitably sentimental. It's sentimentalizing about something you don't know, which you have no right to do.

I love my little granddaughters, but to try to sit here and imagine the people they'll grow up to be, even though they're already here and certain things can be known about them, would be sentimentalizing. It would also be a form of oppression.

The first characteristic of a plan is that it won't work. The bigger the plan and the more far-reaching and 'futuristic' it is, the less likely it is to work.

There isn't a person who is alive and who has any appetite for living, who doesn't make plans. I make a plan for every day I live. I've got certain things I want to do that day, and if I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't do anything. But I can't help but notice, and I've been noticing for a good many years now, that my plans almost never work out. The day almost never exactly fits the plan. Some days depart wildly from the plan. So I conclude that even though you're going to make plans, if you're a live human being, one of the things you must learn to do is to take them lightly.

A plan really is useful for signifying to yourself and other people that you like living, that you're looking forward to living some more, that"