For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
The Lord is my shepherdI shall not want him for longHe maketh me to lie down in green pasturesand there are no green pasturesHe leadeth me beside still watersand still waters run deep
Cowardice as distinguished from panic is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.
Never fall in love?""Always, " said the count. "I am always in love.
We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.
Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.
I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
