Children haven't changed - the world around them has. Their basic natures haven't changed. They like ice creams. They like to have fun, play games if they get space.
The natures of men and women are very mixed, and for me, the most fascinating type of woman is the one who is a little masculine, has a little of the man in her, and the sort of man who is fabulous is the one who is a little woman, too. It's impossible not to mix them!
There are an awful lot of people who despise government precisely because it opened the door for common citizenship for people of all races and all natures in the United States.
What is true of ballet is no less true of the other lively arts. Change is built into their natures. You watch a performance, and then... it's gone.
A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa on. But novelists, damn us, still need true natures - so we can give them to our protagonists. And so readers can vaguely predict how they'll behave when we trap them in 'situations' that they can't IM their way out of.
Basically, we are a whole world of people desperately trying to figure out what is the dark side of our natures and how much can we explore without becoming something else.
Holly Golightly: But just look at the goodies she brought with her.
Paul Varjak: He's all right, I suppose, if you like dark, handsome, rich-looking men with passionate natures and too many teeth.
