FROM DORIS LESSING'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY "UNDER MY SKIN"

It is, I have observed, a rule that people who have been on the periphery of events or a life are those that rush forward to claim first place: people who do know often say nothing or little. Some of the most noisy, not to say noisome, scandals or affairs of our time, that have had a searchlight on them for years, are reflected wrongly of the public mind because the actual participants keep their counsel, and watch, ironically, from the shadows. And there is another thing, much harder to see. People who have been real movers and exciters get left out of histories, and it is because memory itself decides to reject them. These instigators are flamboyant, unscrupulous, hysterical, or even mad, certainly abrasive; but the real point is that they are apparently of a different substance from the smooth, reasonable and sane people who have been inspired by them, and who do not like to remember temporary submersions in lunacy. Often, reading histories, there are events which stick out, do not make enough sense, and one may deduce the existence of some lunatic, male or female, who was equipped with the fiery stuff of inspiration-but was quickly forgotten, since always and at all times the past gets tidied up and made safer.