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Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
page 40 of 232 (17%)
one hasn't got Inspiration?"

"That was precisely the question I was waiting for," said Mr.
Barbecue-Smith. "You ask me what one should do if one hasn't got
Inspiration. I answer: you have Inspiration; everyone has
Inspiration. It's simply a question of getting it to function."

The clock struck eight. There was no sign of any of the other
guests; everybody was always late at Crome. Mr. Barbecue-Smith
went on.

"That's my secret," he said. "I give it you freely." (Denis
made a suitably grateful murmur and grimace.) "I'll help you to
find your Inspiration, because I don't like to see a nice, steady
young man like you exhausting his vitality and wasting the best
years of his life in a grinding intellectual labour that could be
completely obviated by Inspiration. I did it myself, so I know
what it's like. Up till the time I was thirty-eight I was a
writer like you--a writer without Inspiration. All I wrote I
squeezed out of myself by sheer hard work. Why, in those days I
was never able to do more than six-fifty words an hour, and
what's more, I often didn't sell what I wrote." He sighed. "We
artists," he said parenthetically, "we intellectuals aren't much
appreciated here in England." Denis wondered if there was any
method, consistent, of course, with politeness, by which he could
dissociate himself from Mr. Barbecue-Smith's "we." There was
none; and besides, it was too late now, for Mr. Barbecue-Smith
was once more pursuing the tenor of his discourse.

"At thirty-eight I was a poor, struggling, tired, overworked,
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