Life was dense, dark, ancient. They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it.

The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.

Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.

Let nature do the freezing and frightening and isolating in this world. let men work and love and fight it off.

Everything I wrote was true because I believed what I saw.

It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.

Never mistake talking about writing for actual writing.