It’s very odd how each one craves power, the power of money, position, capacity, knowledge. In gaining power there is conflict, confusion and sorrow. The hermit and the politician, the housewife and the scientist are seeking it. They will kill and destroy each other to get it. The ascetics through self-denial, control, suppression gain power; the politician by his word, capacity, cleverness derives that power; the wife dominating the husband and the husband dominating the wife feel this power; the priest who has assumed, who has taken upon himself the responsibility of his god, knows this power. Everyone seeks this power or wants to be associated with divine or worldly power. Power breeds authority and with it comes conflict, confusion and sorrow. Authority corrupts him that has it and those that are near or seeking it. The power of the priest and the housewife, of the leader and the efficient organizer, of the saint and the local politician is evil; the more power the greater the evil. It is a disease that every man catches and cherishes and worships. But with it comes endless conflict, confusion and sorrow. But no one will deny it, put it aside.

I think that I decided to become a writer because of something about language. Not because I had a story to tell, and not because I wanted to be rich and famous, and not because I hoped to achieve immortality through art (though all of those things would eventually have a place among my ambitions), but because of a discovery that I made about language when I was eleven years old. That was the year, at Shady Side Academy, when I had moved to the Middle School; it was the year when we suddenly had male teachers, the school got much stricter, the work got much harder. It was also the year when we began to write weekly compositions in English.