ZANE GREY

I see so much more than I used to see. The effect has been to depress and sadden and hurt me terribly.

What makes life worth living? Better surely, to yield to the stain of suicide blood in me and seek forgetfulness in the embrace of cold dark death.

Every once in a while I feel the tremendous force of the novel. But it does not stay with me.

I confess that reading proofs is a pleasure. It stimulates and inspires me.

There are hours when I must force the novel out of my mind and be interested in the children.

Writing was like digging coal. I sweat blood. The spell is on me.

What is writing but an expression of my own life?

I must go deeper and even stronger into my treasure mine and stint nothing of time, toil, or torture.

I can write best in the silence and solitude of the night, when everyone has retired.

I am full of fire and passion. I am not ready yet for great concentration and passion.

I hate birthdays.

I wrote for nearly six hours. When I stopped, the dark mood, as if by magic, had folded its cloak and gone away.

Men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.

No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperament, except to think him overdoing everything.

These critics who crucify me do not guess the littlest part of my sincerity. They must be burned in a blaze. I cannot learn from them.

I need this wild life, this freedom.

The Indian story has never been written. Maybe I am the man to do it.

Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply.

I am tired. My arm aches. My head boils. My feet are cold. But I am not aware of any weakness.

Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.

This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing.

I love my work but do not know how I write it.

I did not have one bad spell during writing - an unprecedented record.

Love of man for woman - love of woman for man. That's the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself.

I will see this game of life out to its bitter end.