Running for Your Life: Why Run?
One of my favorite anecdotes about origins is by Paul Auster in a crystalline personal memoir called “Why Write?” In it, Auster, as a boy, is at the Polo Grounds at a time when Willie Mays was king. Miraculously, Auster and his adult companions find themselves alone with Mays. They have paper, but no pen or pencil, so Auster misses a golden opportunity to get his hero’s autograph: “Sorry, kid. Ain’t got no pencil, can’t give no autograph.” Auster says he has never again gone out the door without a pencil in his pocket. And he still doesn’t: “If there is a pencil in your pocket, there is a good chance that one day you’ll feel tempted to start using it.”
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