Tall, Aren't You? I Didn't Mean To

Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go Who Is Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid

I Do A Great Deal Of Research, Especially In The Apartments Of Tall Blondes.

Throughout The History Of Commercial Life Nobody Has Ever Quite Liked The Commission Man. His Function Is Too Vague, His Presence Always Seems One Too Many, His Profit Looks Too Easy, And Even When You Admit That He Has A Necessary Function, You Feel That This Function Is, As It Were, A Personification Of Something That In An Ethical Society Would Not Need To Exist. If People Could Deal With One Another Honestly, They Would Not Need Agents.

The Most Durable Thing In Writing Is Style, And Style Is The Most Valuable Investment A Writer Can Make With His Time. It Pays Off Slowly, Your Agent Will Sneer At It, Your Publisher Will Misunderstand It, And It Will Take People You Have Never Heard Of To Convince Them By Slow Degrees That The Writer Who Puts His Individual Mark On The Way He Writes Will Always Pay Off.

It Is A Mass Language Only In The Same Sense That Its Baseball Slang Is Born Of Baseball Players. That Is, It Is A Language Which Is Being Molded By Writers To Do Delicate Things And Yet Be Within The Grasp Of Superficially Educated People. It Is Not A Natural Growth, Much As Its Proletarian Writers Would Like To Think So. But Compared With It At Its Best, English Has Reached The Alexandrian Stage Of Formalism And Decay.