it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.
I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course _ I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother__ front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature.
The Liars' Club
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I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course _ I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother__ front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature.
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Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, __ook at my beautiful home! Isn__ it fine?_ And not, __ook at the home so-and-so has built._ Thus we shouldn__ cry, __ook what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!_ But rather, __ook at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?
To sense the peace of extinguished passionHappiness in not knowing the ultimate knowledge
You're on your own little quest, an there's a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne's Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.
You are a curse in my life!
At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.