J.D. Salinger ~ Franny and Zooey
"I actually reached a point where I said to myself, right out loud, like a lunatic, If I hear just one more picky, cavilling, unconstructive word out of you, Franny Glass, you and I are finished--but finished. And for a while I wasn't too bad. For about a whole month, at least, whenever anybody said anything that sounded campusy and phony, or that smelled to high heaven of ego or something like that, I at least kept quiet about it. I went to the movies or I stayed in the library all hours or I started writing papers like mad on Restoration Comedy and stuff like that--but at least I had the pleasure of not hearing my own voice for a while," She shook her head. "Then, one morning--bang, bang, I started up again. I didn't sleep all night, for some reason, and I had an eight-o'clock in French Lit, so finally I just got up and got dressed and made some coffee and then walked around the campus. What I wanted to do was just go for a terribly long ride on my bike, but I was afraid everybody'd hear me taking my bike out of the stand--something always falls--so I just went to the Lit building and sat. I sat and sat, and finally I got up and started writing things from Epictetus all over the blackboard. I filled the whole front blackboard--I didn't even know I'd remembered so much of him. I erased it--thank God! --before people started coming in. But it was a childish thing to do anyway--Epictetus would have absolutely hated me for doing it--but ..."