It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

Write about winter in the summer.

I saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains

It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.

You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then-and only then-it is handed to you.