Page 57

If I photograph half empty bars, I may become a poet.

   "But where, woman wailing above your station, is it you want to go to, get to, accomplish, communicate? Can't you be amply satisfied with such pain, such babies, such balancing? 
   No. No. There's a blood-flecked urge to go even a step further.
   Above the laughter, above the miseries, above the clatter of glasses and the cries of children, I hear a voice saying: Isn't there some statement you'd like to make? Anything noted while alive? Anything felt, seen, heard, done? You are here. You're having your turn. Isn't there something you know and nobody else does? What if nobody listens? Is it all to be wasted? All blasted? What about the pricey pain?  What about those people. They sit outside this story, but give it its shape. If it has a shape. What about all the words that were said and all the words that were never said?"

Elizabeth Smart
The Assumption of the Rogues & Rascals
Paladin Grafton Books, 1991
original publisher, Jonathan Cape Ltd, Great Britain 1978