Ola, I was rummaging through my old diary and I came across the following samples from Sherwood Anderson's collection of connected stories "Winesburg, Ohio." dyam, may 2000 seems like yesterday. From - The Teacher If you want to be a writer you'll have t stop fooling with words. It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it's time to be living. I don't want to frighten you but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say. From- Death Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night. You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft winds blow, the long hot day of dissappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses. From - Sophistication There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens: he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the worls, seeing, as though they marched in processing before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and afian disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication had come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merealy a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the wind, a thing like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a woman that is because he believes that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding. From- Departure He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood. ----:) mG.