I'm inclined to think that my material, the South, is not very important to me. I just happen to know it, and don't have time to learn another one and write at the same time. Though the one I know is probably as good as another, life is a phenomenon but not a novelty, the same frantic steeplechase toward nothing everywhere and man stinks the same no matter where in time. The local novel would redeem American literature especially in the South and with the American Negro, and when the real Pacific literature comes. It will be such a literature as no other locality could produce, a literature that could not have been written in any other time, or among other surroundings.
Art is simpler than people think because there is so little to write about.
All the moving things are eternal in man's history and have been written before, and if man writes hard enough, sincerely enough, humbly enough, and with the unalterable determination never to be quite satisfied with it, he will repeat them, because art like poverty takes care of its own, shares its bread. Indeed, I know of no rarer or more valuable qualification than that describing common objects and relating familiar occurrences in such a manner as to render them pleasing and instructing, but when this talent is acquired, materials on which it may usefully and properly be exercised can never be deficient. I cannot conceive that the character of any man is unworthy to be known, and believe that there is no person, the incidents of whose life if skillfully related, would not furnish as much entertainment by their variety, and novelty as any fictitious narrative that ever was written. The true Romance is a more serious business than this. It is not merely a conjurer's trick-box full of flimsy quackeries, tinsel and claptraps, meant only to amuse, and relying upon deception to do even that.