I'm Tired Of My Life, My Clothes,

In A Certain Sense, A Writer Is An Exile, An Outsider, Always Reporting On Things, And It Is Part Of His Life To Keep On The Move. Travel Is Natural.

To Write? Because All This Is Going To Vanish. The Only Thing Left Will Be The Prose And Poems, The Books, What Is Written Down. Man Was Very Fortunate To Have Invented The Book. Without It The Past Would Completely Vanish, And We Would Be Left With Nothing, We Would Be Naked On Earth.

In 1957, I Decided: Write Or Perish.

In The War Time Many Of The Publishing Houses Were Privately Owned, A Single Publisher Or A Publisher And A Few Associates Who Were Responsible For Everything. They Could Take Whatever Risks They Wanted, Could Essentially Publish What They Liked According To Their Taste. Publishers Today Are Working For Big Corporations. They Have Different Pressures. I Don't Think They Can Make Decisions Quite As Independently As They Used To Be Able To. They Have More Corporate And Financial Responsibilities Weighing On Them. They're Not Free To Go Broke Or Go To Jail.

I'm Tired Of My Life, My Clothes, The Things I Say. I'm Hacking Away At The Surface, As At Some Kind Of Gray Ice, Trying To Break Through To What Is Underneath Or I Am Dead. I Can Feel The Surface Trembling—it Seems Ready To Give But It Never Does. I Am Uninterested In Current Events. How Can I Justify This? How Can I Explain It? I Don't Want To Have The Same Vocabulary I've Always Had. I Want Something Richer, Broader, More Penetrating And Powerful.