All Writers - All Beings - Are

The Only Certainty About Writing And Trying To Be A Writer Is That It Has To Be Done, Not Dreamed Of Or Planned And Never Written, Or Talked About (the Ego Eventually Falls Apart Like A Soaked Sponge), But Simply Written; It's A Dreadful, Awful Fact That Writing Is Like Any Other Work.

Possibility Was Not A Bag Or Box That Could Be Closed And Sealed, It Was A Vast Open Chute Which Received Everything, Everything; One Could Not Choose Or Direct Or Destroy The Powerful Flow Of Possibility.

Writing A Novel Is Not Merely Going On A Shopping Expedition Across The Border To An Unreal Land: It Is Hours And Years Spent In The Factories, The Streets, The Cathedrals Of The Imagination.

When Our Thoughts Revolve We Are So Often Deceived Into Supposing That Their Violent Movement Is An Indication Of Their Vigorous Originality, The Upheaval Of Prejudice And Fixed Ideas, When All The Time It Is More Likely That The Machine Which Contains Them Is Only An Elaborate Cement-mixer, And When The Thinking Is Finished, Those Whirling Thoughts Are Smoothed Into The Unchanged Conventional Mould And Seeing Them Set Solid Enough To Dance, To Build, To Travel Upon, We Would Never Dream Of Their First Deceit, Of The Hope Once Roused By Their Apparently Violent Reorganisation.

The Sooner You 'settle' The Sooner You'll Be Allowed Home" Was The Ruling Logic; And "if You Can't Adapt Yourself To Living In A Mental Hospital How Do You Expect To Be Able To Live 'out In The World'?" How Indeed?