It gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as a glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it.
Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.
The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are bailed hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?
In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in its greatness.
When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.
My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what they sing.