I Delight In What I

I Cannot Find Any Patience For Those People Who Believe That You Start Writing When You Sit Down At Your Desk And Pick Up Your Pen And Finish Writing When You Put Down Your Pen Again; A Writer Is Always Writing, Seeing Everything Through A Thin Mist Of Words, Fitting Swift Little Descriptions To Everything He Sees, Always Noticing. Just As I Believe That A Painter Cannot Sit Down To His Morning Coffee Without Noticing What Color It Is, So A Writer Cannot See An Odd Little Gesture Without Putting A Verbal Description To It, And Ought Never To Let A Moment Go By Undescribed.

No Live Organism Can Continue For Long To Exist Sanely Under Conditions Of Absolute Reality; Even Larks And Katydids Are Supposed, By Some, To Dream. Hill House, Not Sane, Stood By Itself Against Its Hills, Holding Darkness Within; It Had Stood So For Eighty Years And Might Stand For Eighty More. Within, Walls Continued Upright, Bricks Met Neatly, Floors Were Firm, And Doors Were Sensibly Shut; Silence Lay Steadily Against The Wood And Stone Of Hill House, And Whatever Walked There, Walked Alone.

I Was Already Doing A Lot Of Splendid Research Reading All The Books About Ghosts I Could Get Hold Of, And Particularly True Ghost Stories - So Much So That It Became Necessary For Me To Read A Chapter Of _little Women_ Every Night Before I Turned Out The Light - And At The Same Time I Was Collecting Pictures Of Houses, Particularly Odd Houses, To See What I Could Find To Make Into A Suitable Haunted House.

Am I Walking Toward Something I Should Be Running Away From?

Within, Walls Continued Upright, Bricks Met Neatly, Floors Were Firm, And Doors Were Sensibly Shut; Silence Lay Steadily Against The Wood And Stone Of Hill House, And Whatever Walked There, Walked Alone.