"...I should like you to think, though. You have thoughts, I know, and sometimes they're rather startling, but they don't connect yet."
"Are they startling?" asked the gratified owner.
"They startle you, don't they?--But try joining them together; this, then that, then the other. That's thinking; aat least, that's beginning to think."
Eva fitted her knuckles together. She frowned down at them. "Then, what?"
"Then you go on."
"Till when?"
"Till you've arrived at something. Or found something out, or shed light on something. Or come to some conclusion, rightly or wrongly. And then what?--then you begin again."
"Why, however?" Eva asked, not unreasonably.
--Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout 61 (1968, Vintage 1999)
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