As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!"
I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.
I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.
O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!
I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.
I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.
Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing.
The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing, can spring openly from some rotted substance within our civilization.
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