March 2, 1904

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living...it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what i do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

Comentario

“Me he recluido sin el menor propósito de hacerlo, sin la menor sospecha de que eso iba a ocurrir. Me he convertido en un prisionero, me he encerrado en un calabozo y ahora no encuentro la llave; y aunque estuviera abierta la puerta, casi me daría miedo salir”.

¡Es peligroso crear abismos en los afectos humanos, no tanto por su longitud y anchura, sino porque rápidamente se cierran sobre sí mismos!.

En medio de la aparente confusión de nuestro mundo misterioso, los individuos se ajustan con tanta perfección a un sistema, y los sistemas unos a otros, y a un todo, que con solo dar un paso a un costado durante un instante, un hombre se expone al pavoroso riesgo de perder su lugar para siempre. Ese hombre puede convertirse, por así decirlo, en el paria del Universo.

¿No encierra esta historia una profunda moraleja? Si el resultado de uno, o de todos nuestros actos, pudiera ser proyectado y desarrollado ante nosotros, algunos dirían que eso es el destino y se preguntarían sobre él, mientras otros se dejarían arrastrar por sus deseos apasionados, y ninguno sería disuadido por los retratos proféticos.

05

- "It isn't just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness' sake. I mean if he were a girl, he'd have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through Wales. Or taken an apartment in New York and worked for a magazine or an advertising company. It's everybody, i mean. Everything everybody does is so -i don't know- not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way...I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting -it is, it is. I don't care what anybody says."

- "You sure you're just not afraid of competing? I don't know much about it, but i'd lay odds a good psychoanalyst -i mean a really competent one- would probably take that statement."

- "I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid i will compete, that's what scares me. That's why i quit the theatre department. Just because i'm so Horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because i like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash."