What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.

People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.

But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

In the water I am beautiful.

Oh, God — the lives people try to lead. Oh, God — what a world they try to lead them in.

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlighenment and comfort at top speed