No sign of pleasure greeted the announcement. The mood in the hall was leaden. My mood was livelier. Fright is livelier than lead.

If beginnings terrify you, or if you just plain don't like writing them, or if they bore you, skip 'em.

Climb the day, Drop your dreams, Possess the day.

You see, writing down your meanderings gets something started deep in the recesses of your brain. That distant part of your mind knows that you want to write stories or poems or plays and not endless jabber, and it will get to work. It may take a while. You may have to write this stuff for hours or days or weeks, but eventually that subterranean part of your brain will come through and begin to send you ideas.

No, I won't marry you. I won't do it. No one can force me.

But what I really long to know you do not tell either: what you feel, although I've given you hints by the score of my regard. You like me. You wouldn't waste time or paper on a being you didn't like. But I think I've loved you since we met at your mother's funeral. I want to be with you forever and beyond, but you write that you are too young to marry or too old or too short or too hungry - until I crumple your letters up in despair, only to smooth them out again for a twelfth reading, hunting for hidden meanings.

In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed.