The Faith of a Writer : Life, Craft, Art

I, on the contrary, am fated to be “real”—“physical”—“corporeal”—to “exist in Time.” I continue to age year by year, if not hour by hour, while “JCO,” the other, remains no fixed age—in spiritual essence, perhaps, forever poised between the fever of idealism and the chill of cynicism, a precocious eighteen years old. Yet, can a process be said to have an age?—an impulse, a strategy, an obsessive tracery, like planetary orbits to which planets, “real” planets, must conform?

But to feel is not to know; and strong feelings will block knowledge.

A Portrait of the Artist is about language, is language, a portrait-in-progress of the creator, as he discovers the range and depth of his genius.