People fight hardest to defend their right not to say what they are fighting about.
From The Fears That Bind, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Two men on the bench by the laundromat went at it for forty minutes this afternoon and never once named the thing. It was about a ladder, then about who called whom last winter, then about a tone of voice from some evening neither of them would date. Switch lost interest after ten minutes and went for the dogwood. I used to think an argument was a disagreement people were trying to settle, and that the shouting was the work of getting it settled; I think now the shouting is the fence. People fight hardest to defend their right not to say what they are fighting about. The one in the green coat kept saying it is not about the ladder, and he was right, and he was not going to tell us either.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
