Our world was brutal, immoral, smug and conventional. We had unbounded contempt for all those who did not sin as we sinned.

The imaginative young vagabond quickly loses the social instincts that help to make life bearable for other men. Always he hears voices calling in the night from far-away places where blue waters lap strange shores. He hears birds singing and crickets chirping a luring roundelay. He sees the moon, yellow ghost of a dead planet, haunting the earth.

The winter passes and the warm winds of May made me long to wander again. The whistling of a locomotive on a still night had a lure, unexplainable, yet strong, like the light which leads a moth to destruction.

Long patience and application saturated with your heart's blood-you will either write or you will not-and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.