If You Are To Become A Writer

From The Place By The Railing At The Edge Of The Tracks On The Summer Evening I Return Across The City To My Own Room. I Am Vividly Aware Of My Own Life That Escaped The Winter On The Boat. How Many Such Lives I Have Lived. Then I Only Made A Dollar And A Half A Day And Now I Sometimes Make More Than That In A Few Minutes. How Wonderful To Be Able To Write Words. ... Again I Begin The Endless Game Of Reconstructing My Own Life, Jerking It Out Of The Shell That Dies, Striving To Breathe Into It Beauty And Meaning. ... I Wonder Why My Life, Why All Lives, Are Not More Beautiful.

The Fools Who Write Articles About Me Think That One Morning I Suddenly Decided To Write And Began To Produce Masterpieces. There Is No Special Trick About Writing, Or Painting Either. I Wrote Constantly For 15 Years Before I Produced Anything With Any Solidity To It.

When A Job Is To Be Done There's No Use Putting It Off.

The Machines Men Are So Intent On Making Have Carried Them Very Far From The Old Sweet Things.

The Moment One Of The People Took One Of The Truths To Himself, Called It Histruth, And Tried To Live His Life By It, He Became A Grotesque And The Truth He Embraced A Falsehood.