“I write not to justify a portfolio of personal failures. I do not seek to moralize or cast blame for my follies and catastrophes upon other people. I do not seek to malign other persons when documenting a series of unpleasant personal encounters in an unyielding society. I desire to overcome myself. I write in an attempt to alter my worldview, calm the soul, find serenity, extinguish hatred, and discover those elementary feelings of wellbeing which subsist permanently in humankind, which are independent of culture, race, class, and time. I write in an effort to discover the moral sublimity underlying existence. I write in order to understand myself and to transfigure myself. Writing is my attempt to rise beyond the facileness of my prior existence. I write in an effort to transcend the prodigious pain of living a profligate life. I write in an attempt to transmute my personage from that of an ordinary toad who despises all of his visible warts. I write in an attempt to decipher how to overcome a penchant for personal aggressiveness and brutality and become kind and gentle. I write in an attempt to discover how I can become a wise person who courageously faces the obstacles of life and exhibits grace and poise in the horror of his blackest days. I write to create an artifact of an intact and pacific persona.”