'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it.
Weep not for me. Rather let your tears flow for the sorrows of the multitude. My work is done. Like a ripe fruit I admit the gathering. Death has no terrors for it is a wise law of nature. I am ready whenever the summons may come.
'I Drink' took me two years to write.
If you don't get it built, the work doesn't matter.
The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.
It being our duty to mortify... we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, does but half his work.
I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.
I hold that a man had better be dead than alive when his work is done.
I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.
