John Galsworthy

“ He would not, however, get beyond the fourth page if it were a novel, before he would say: "Muck! He can't write!" and would feel absolutely stimulated to take up his own pen and write something that was worth reading. Sometimes, on the other hand, he would put the novel down after the third page, exclaiming: "By Jove! He can write!" And there would rise within him such a sense of dejection at his own inferiority, that he would feel simply compelled to try and see whether he really was inferior. ”

“ But every now and then he would stop and say to himself: "I really must see more of life, I really must take in more fuel"; and he would passionately fix his eyes on a cloud, or a flower, or a man walking, and there would instantly come into his mind the thought: "I have written twenty books—ten more will make thirty—that cloud is gray'" ”

“ If other people touched on them in the same way he had, not unnaturally, a feeling of real pain, such as comes to a man when he sees an instance of cruelty or injustice. And though something always told him that it was neither wise nor dignified to notice outrages of this order, he would mutter to his wife: "Well, I suppose it is true—I can't write;" feeling perhaps that—if he could not with decency notice such injuries, she might. And, indeed, she did, using warmer words than even he felt justified, which was soothing.
After tea it was his habit to sit down a second time pen in hand ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”