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

For one crime which is expiated in prison ten thousand are committed thoughtlessly by those who condemn.

I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

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.

There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.