"Here's the way I wrote in one of the things I wrote a while back: "But since he had been in the army, he had come to understand his ungraspable longing and his phantasmal and belly-shrinking dissatisfaction: there were such things he wanted to be, to do, to write: He wanted to be the voice that shrieked out the agony of frustration and lostness and despair and loneliness, that all men feel, yet cannot understand; the voice that rolled forth the booming, intoxicating laughter of men's joy; the voice that richly purred men's love of good hot food and spicy strong drink; men's love of thick, moist, pungent tobacco smoke on a full belly; men's love of woman: voluptuous, throaty voiced, silken-thighed, and sensual." I suppose that sounds an awful lot like Wolfe, but if it does, it's exactly the way I feel."
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Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (7 April 1941); p. 13
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Jones
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James Jones
James Ramon Jones (6 November 1921 – 9 May 1977) was an American author, who became famous after the publication of his first novel, From Here to Eternity.
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