And My Problem Was That

When American Life Is Most American It Is Apt To Be Most Theatrical.

I Am An Invisible Man. No, I Am Not A Spook Like Those Who Haunted Edgar Allan Poe; Nor Am I One Of Your Hollywood-movie Ectoplasms.

I Feel The Need To Reaffirm All Of It, The Whole Unhappy Territory And All The Things Loved And Unloveable In It, For It Is All Part Of Me.

I Was Never More Hated Than When I Tried To Be Honest. Or When, Even As Just Now I've Tried To Articulate Exactly What I Felt To Be The Truth. No One Was Satisfied

The Blues Is An Impulse To Keep The Painful Details And Episodes Of A Brutal Experience Alive In One's Aching Consciousness, To Finger Its Jagged Grain, And To Transcend It, Not By The Consolation Of Philosophy But By Squeezing From It A Near-tragic, Near-comic Lyricism. As A Form, The Blues Is An Autobiographical Chronicle Of Personal Catastrophe Expressed Lyrically.