Ma che cosa posso raccontare a questa ragazza, ora, in questa fredda mattina ventosa al Gritti Palace Hotel?“Che cosa vorresti sapere, Figlia?” le chiese“Tutto quanto.”“Va bene” disse il colonnello. “Incominciamo.

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.