Annotations for Uncategorized: Doubt

...of public opinion and affection, the more they think you must be something of a crank. Laughter If you happen to say that you are interested in Spiritualism or that you’re convinced of survival, they say 'oh yes, such a clever brain you know, such a remarkable man, but you know of course he’s gone a little bit off his head coughing in his old age.'

A number of people who have never said it to my face but implied it in various ways, in magazines and in papers and indeed, on a few odd occasions in my audience, who suggested that perhaps I’d been writing so much fiction for so long that I’d created something from my own brain in regard to this subject.

You know people are extraordinary. If you give them what they want they like you very much. But if you give them something that they don’t want or think they don’t want or something which is... ...foreign Coughing/Banging to their nature or to their upbringing and background or if you tell them something that is against the accepted beliefs, whether it is in religion or in politic or whatever it is that goes against the grain, they think, 'oh well poor old thing. He’s a dear old thing he’s contributed a great deal in his own way, but now, of course, he is getting on a bit, and he has gone a little bit soft.'

But I do say this, that any man or woman who sincerely seeks truth pause will find it. pause I know there will be some who will criticise when they listen to this. There will be some who will make excuses. There will be some that will say, 'oh well, how do we know it is him?' There will be some who will say, 'oh of course you know he had a cleft mouth, and that does not sound like his voice' - but, if they are intelligent they will know damn well I haven't got a cleft mouth over here.

This I do deliberately, because there will always be people who say 'how do we know that this is Oscar Wilde?' And so I am expected to come back very much the same, with the same...attitude towards life and towards people and to say the same sort of things that would be expected of me. So for your sakes I do this, because I know, poor dears, you're struggling so desperately hard to convince. And if I can assist you to convince, then I shall be doing some good work that may wipe out some of my blots. Oh!

...so that you might, in some measure, be of help to others. Because otherwise if I am not, to some extent, my old self, people will say 'that cannot be'. So for your sakes, I do this. But I can and will talk on the things that you wish me to speak about, uh, in due course.