Life owes me a living worth living. Yes, Eden regarded life as her debtor, she its relentless paymaster.

[Wishing her mother had named her Beulah:] At least you did not sit on your beulah.

Some authors have what amounts to a metaphysical approach. They admit to inspiration. Sudden and unaccountable urgencies to writecatapult them out of sleep and bed. For myself, I have never awakened to jot down an idea that was acceptable the following morning.

Isn't success ridiculously easy, once it begins to succeed? ... after the strain and sweat and pushing until the very groins of your being shrieked protest, something like momentum happened. It took your wits and your concentration and your continued willing sweat, of course, to keep it going, but the success of success had ball bearings.

Nervous hands as if the fingers were dripping from them like icicles.

Luscious feet that listened to the soil and stole its secrets.

The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.