The Best I Had Been Gone From Me

"If a man sitting all alone cannot dream strange things and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances. But for myself, during the whole of my custom house experience, moonlight and sunshine and the glow of firelight were just alike in my regard" "A better book than i shall ever write was there, leaf after leaf, presenting itself to me ... only because my brain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to transcribe it." 'I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays and had become a tolerably good surveyor of the customs'