Like The Man Said, A Little Hope

I Have Spent A Good Many Years Since―too Many, I Think―being Ashamed About What I Write. I Think I Was Forty Before I Realized That Almost Every Writer Of Fiction Or Poetry Who Has Ever Published A Line Has Been Accused By Someone Of Wasting His Or Her God-given Talent. If You Write (or Paint Or Dance Or Sculpt Or Sing, I Suppose), Someone Will Try To Make You Feel Lousy About It, That's All.

People Think First Love Is Sweet, And Never Sweeter Than When That First Bond Snaps. You've Heard A Thousand Pop And Country Songs That Prove The Point; Some Fool Got His Heart Broke. Yet That First Broken Heart Is Always The Most Painful, The Slowest To Mend, And Leaves The Most Visible Scar. What's So Sweet About That?

Maybe That's Why God Made Us Kids First And Built Us Close To The Ground, Because He Knows You Got To Fall Down A Lot And Bleed A Lot Before You Learn That One Simple Lesson. You Pay For What You Get, You Own What You Pay For... And Sooner Or Later Whatever You Own Comes Back Home To You.

Only Two Things Happen To Writers When They Die: Either Their Work Survives, Or It Becomes Forgotten.

I Wouldn't Have Missed A Single Minute Of It, Not For The Whole World.