Q. How does your day pass?

Until quite recently my day was as follows. I got up at 7.00 (I may not lie any longer, for then there is a banging on the walls and my bed burns). Boiled my coffee (for no one else but I can do that, just like Balzac and Swedenborg). Then I went out for a walk. If I had not drunk any spirits the night before, then to be alive and walk like this was a positive pleasure. The morning possesses something that makes one feel young at heart, reborn, which evaporates with the dew. By lunch time the day is beginning to be the worse for wear; and the afternoon (at its worst about 6.00) is debauched, unshaven, dirty. If they only knew, those who lie in of a morning, what they lost!

Anyway, after an hour or an hour and a half I am back home, and fully loaded. I have warned the servants in advance not to speak to me, for that can end in their misfortune. (After a short while they usually know to run and hide.) I am not wet with sweat, and loosen my clothes, all the way down to my belt. And so it begins: On yellow, uncut Lessebo Bikupa paper, with Sir Joshua Mason's 1001 nib and Antoine Fil's violette noire it breaks out, accompanied by continual cigarette smoking, until 12 o'clock.

Then it is over, and I am extinguished; I go and lie down to sleep …

Strindberg, interviewed