What The Artist Owes The World Is

I First Became Fascinated With The Sears Catalogue Because All The People In Its Pages Were Perfect. Nearly Everybody I Knew Had Something Missing, A Finger Cut Off, A Toe Split, An Ear Half-chewed Away, An Eye Clouded With Blindness From A Glancing Fence Staple. And If They Didn't Have Something Missing, They Were Carrying Scars From Barbed Wire, Or Knives, Or Fishhooks. But The People In The Catalogue Had No Such Hurts. They Were Not Only Whole, Had All Their Arms And Legs And Eyes On Their Unscarred Bodies, But They Were Also Beautiful.

We Want To Be Famous As A Writer, As A Poet, As A Painter, As A Politician, As A Singer, Or What You Will. Why? Becauwse We Really Don't Lov What We Are Doing. If You Loved To Sing, Or To Paint, Or To Write Poems - If You Really Loved It - You Would Not Be Concerned With Whether You Are Famous Or Not. ... Our Present Education Is Rotten Because It Teaches Us To Love Nothing Is Allowed To Die In A Society Of Storytelling People.

Hell Came Right Along With God, Hand In Hand. The Stink Of Sulfur Swirled In The Air Of The Church, Fire Burned In The Aisles, And Brimstone Rained Out Of The Rafters. From The Evangelist's Oven Mouth Spewed Images Of A Place With Pitchforks, And Devils, And Lakes Of Fire That Burned Forever. God Had Fixed A Place Like That Because He Loved Us So Much.

Writers Spend All Their Time Preoccupied With Just The Things That Their Fellow Men And Women Spend Their Time Trying To Avoid Thinking About. ... It Takes Great Courage To Look Where You Have To Look, Which Is In Yourself, In Your Experience, In Your Relationship With Fellow Beings, Your Relationship To The Earth, To The Spirit Or To The First Cause—to Look At Them And Make Something Of Them.

I've Never Enjoyed Myself. I'm Incapable Of Enjoying Myself. There's Just Some People Who Don't Enjoy Themselves Very Much.