I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America.

We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

he threw up his hands and wrote the Universe dont exist and died to prove it

we're all golden sunflowers inside.

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

The actual materials are important. A book at the nightstand is important - a light you can get at - or a flashlight as Kerouac had a brakeman's latern.