I Never Wanted To Be Well-rounded. I

If You're Gonna Write, For God In Heaven's Sake, Try To Get Naked. Try To Write The Truth. Try To Get Underneath All The Sham, All The Excuses, All The Lies That You've Been Told.

Teaching, Real Teaching, Is - Or Ought To Be - A Messy Business.

If You Wait Until You Got Time To Write A Novel, Or Time To Write A Story, Or Time To Read The Hundred Thousands Of Books You Should Have Already Read - If You Wait For The Time, You Will Never Do It. ‘cause There Ain’t No Time; World Don’t Want You To Do That. World Wants You To Go To The Zoo And Eat Cotton Candy, Preferably Seven Days A Week.

I Never Wanted To Be Well-rounded. I Do Not Admire Well-rounded People Nor Their Work. So Far As I Can See, Nothing Good In The World Has Ever Been Done By Well-rounded People. The Good Work Is Done By People With Jagged, Broken Edges, Because Those Edges Cut Things And Leave An Imprint, A Design.

I First Became Fascinated With The Sears Catalogue Because All The People In Its Pages Were Perfect. Nearly Everybody I Knew Had Something Missing, A Finger Cut Off, A Toe Split, An Ear Half-chewed Away, An Eye Clouded With Blindness From A Glancing Fence Staple. And If They Didn't Have Something Missing, They Were Carrying Scars From Barbed Wire, Or Knives, Or Fishhooks. But The People In The Catalogue Had No Such Hurts. They Were Not Only Whole, Had All Their Arms And Legs And Eyes On Their Unscarred Bodies, But They Were Also Beautiful.