My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day.
I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.