As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.

Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.

Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.

My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally.

God knows what lives in me in place of me.