I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.
I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one” in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.
I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.
I actually run a non-profit where one of the main objectives is to branch out and get a new audience for the theater. Just because the writing is so good and nothing is more effective than seeing something live and happening right in front of your face, so I definitely want to continue to pursue that.
Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life - and one is as good as another.
Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.
Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.