Silver

When I was in Nevada, I lived about sixty miles out of Reno. There was a guy who had this house on stilts. In the desert. And that was a very curious thing, looking at this house raised up about ten feet above the ground. I wondered, Was he waiting for a flood? Well, it turned out he had a hole in the ground under that house, and there was a silver mine down at the bottom of this hole. He would periodically go down and dig himself out some silver. That was his bank. And I think that’s like a writer. He’s living on top of that hole. He goes down there and sees if he can chop out some silver.

ARTHUR MILLER