even if they weren’t writing. I just think it’s their characterological makeup. Whether that characterological makeup drove them to write or to paint, as well as to alcohol or to suicide, I don’t know. I know there are an awful lot of healthy writers and painters who have no thoughts of suicide. I think it’s a myth, by and large. It creates a special aura, a frailty, around the artist to say that he lives so close to the edge. He’s so responsive to the world around him, so sensitive, so driven to respond to it, it’s almost unbearable. That he must escape either through drugs or alcohol,
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