I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.

Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong - it can end everything.

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.

What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.

By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.