What Terrible Tragedies Realism Inflicts On People.

As For Me, This Is My Story: I Worked And Was Tortured. You Know What It Means To Compose? No, Thank God, You Do Not! I Believe You Have Never Written To Order, By The Yard, And Have Never Experienced That Hellish Torture.

Times Of Crisis, Of Disruption Or Constructive Change, Are Not Only Predictable, But Desirable. They Mean Growth. Taking A New Step, Uttering A New Word, Is What People Fear Most.

I Could Not Become Anything; Neither Good Nor Bad; Neither A Scoundrel Nor An Honest Man; Neither A Hero Nor An Insect. And Now I Am Eking Out My Days In My Corner, Taunting Myself With The Bitter And Entirely Useless Consolation That An Intelligent Man Cannot Seriously Become Anything, That Only A Fool Can Become Something.

But It's Precisely In This Cold, Loathsome Half-despair, Half-belief, In This Deliberate Burying Of Yourself Underground For Forty Years Out Of Sheer Pain, In This Assiduously Constructed, And Yet Somewhat Dubious Hopelessness, In All This Poision Of Unfulfilled Desires Turned Inward, This Fever Of Vacillations, Of Resolutions Adopted For Eternity, And Of Repentances A Moment Later That You Find The Very Essence Of That Strange, Sharp Pleasure.

Nothing Could Be More Absurd Than Moral Lessons At Such A Moment! Oh, Self-satisfied People: With What Proud Self-satisfaction Such Babblers Are Ready To Utter Their Pronouncements! If They Only Knew To What Degree I Myself Understand All The Loathsomeness Of My Present Condition, They Wouldn't Have The Heart To Teach Me.