"And when will you write?"
"As I go along."
"Val, you're a dreamer."
"Sure I am. But I'm an active dreamer. There's a difference."
Then I added: "We're all dreamers, only some of us wake
up in time to put down a few words. Certainly I want to write.
But I don't think it's the end-all and be-all. How shall I put it?
Writing is like the caca that you make in your sleep. Delicious
caca, to be sure, but first comes life, then the caca. Life is change,
movement, quest... a going forward to meet the unknown, the
unexpected. Only a very few men can say of themselves - 'I have
lived!' That's why we have books - so that men may live vica-
riously. But when the author also lives vicariously - !"
She broke in. "When I listen to you sometimes, Val, I feel
that you want to live a thousand lives in one. You're eternally
dissatisfied - with life as it is, with yourself, with just about
everything. You're a Mongol. You belong on the steppes of
Central Asia."
Nexus, de Henry Miller