Death Is a Lonely Business

Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.

A day without writing was a little death.

What should I do?" "Throw up in your typewriter every morning." "Yeah." "Clean up every noon.

Someone who loved night arrivals and dark departures, for the hell, the fun, the death of it?

With nothing trembles. To be afraid of nothing for no reason. And having to live with that nothing until dawn.

Perhaps I expected to look in and find a giant canary, stretched out on a carpet of dust, songless, capable of only heart murmurs for talk.

Everyone in the world needs two, three jobs,” I said, without hesitation. “One job isn’t enough, just as one life isn’t enough. I want to have a dozen of both.” “Bull’s-eye. Doctors should dig ditches. Ditchdiggers ought to run kindergartens one day a week. Philosophers should wash dishes in a greasy spoon two nights out of ten. Mathematicians should blow whistles at high school gyms. Poets should drive trucks for a change of menu and police detectives—” “Should own and operate the Garden of Eden,” I said, quietly.