Begin With An Individual, And Before You

I Had A Strong Sudden Instinct That I Must Be Alone. I Didn’t Want To See Any People At All. I Had Seen So Many People All My Life -- I Was An Average Mixer, But More Than Average In A Tendency To Identify Myself, My Ideas, My Destiny, With Those Of All Classes That Came In Contact With. I Was Always Saving Or Being Saved -- In A Single Morning I Would Go Through The Emotions Ascribable To Wellington At Waterloo. I Lived In A World Of Inscrutable Hostiles And Inalienable Friends And Supporters.

I Talk With The Authority Of Failure - Ernest With The Authority Of Success. We Could Never Sit Across The Same Table Again.

This Is A Valley Of Ashes--a Fantastic Farm Where Ashes Grow Like Wheat Into Ridges And Hills And Grotesque Gardens; Where Ashes Take The Forms Of Houses And Chimneys And Rising Smoke And, Finally, With A Transcendent Effort, Of Men Who Move Dimly And Already Crumbling Through The Powdery Air. Occasionally A Line Of Gray Cars Crawls Along An Invisible Track, Gives Out A Ghastly Creak, And Comes To Rest, And Immediately The Ash-gray Men Swarm Up With Leaden Spades And Stir Up An Impenetrable Cloud, Which Screens Their Obscure Operations From Your Sight.

I See You're Looking At My Cuff Buttons." I Hadn't Been Looking At Them, But I Did Now.

Reporting The Extreme Things As If They Were The Average Things Will Start You On The Art Of Fiction.