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“Shit, I probably would have lost anyhow. A gambler without an excuse is a gambler who can’t continue.”
“Love and Genius are two of the most over-used words in the language,” I said.
somehow, the telling of old stories, again and again, seems to bring them closer to what they were supposed to be.”
“Let’s drink a while,” I said, “and readjust to our own reality.”
Of course, what made the whole thing smell was that many of the rich and the famous were actually dumb cunts and bastards. They had simply fallen into a big pay-off somewhere. Or they were enriched by the stupidity of the general public. They usually were talentless, eyeless, soulless, they were walking pieces of dung, but to the public they were god-like, beautiful, and revered. Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste. It finally boiled down to a matter of who got the most votes. In the land of the moles a mole was king. So, who deserved anything? Nobody deserved anything…
Lawyers, doctors, plumbers, they made all the money. Writers? Writers starved. Writers suicided. Writers went mad.
She was the only person I’ve ever met who had the same contempt for the human race as I did.”
I liked to watch the fights. Somehow it reminded me of writing. You needed the same thing, talent, guts and condition. Only the condition was mental, spiritual. You were never a writer. You had to become a writer each time you sat down to the machine. It wasn’t that hard once you sat down in front of the machine. What was hard sometimes was finding that chair and sitting in it. Sometimes you couldn’t sit in it. Like everybody else in the world, for you, things got in the way: small troubles, big troubles, continuous slammings and bangings. You had to be in condition to endure what was trying
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I had been preceded by some good drinkers. Eugene O’Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, Jack London. The booze loosened those typewriter keys, gave them some spark and gamble.
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