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Now began a period of exhilaration and extreme poverty.  Varese's pockets were empty but he was free. Sometimes he almost starved and sometimes he had no place to sleep. But he had music and he was young.  He told me of nights when he slept under the arcades of the Louvre, grateful if the flics (cops) left him in peace, protected at least from the rain, if not from the cold.  At other times he had a lodging but no money for food.  And the hungrier he was, the more imperative his pride.

Louise Varese, Varese a looking glass diary, Norton, New York, 1972.

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Why what have you thought of yourself? Is it you then that thought yourself less? Is it you that thought the President greater than you? Or the rich better off than you?  or the educated wiser than you? (Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief, Or that you are diseas'd, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and never        saw your name in print, Do you give in that you are3 any less immortal?) Walt Whitman, A Song For Occupations, Selected Poems , Dover Thrift Editions, 1991