I have seen them intimately, close at hand. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have had, in the course of my life, many encounters with many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. Such knowledge is useful, if one gets lost in the night. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. I have flown a little over all parts of the world and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. I had been disheartened by the failure of my drawing number 1 and my drawing number 2.
That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. They always need to have things explained. Then, I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. They answered me: “Why should any one be frightened by a hat?” I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.” In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. It was a picture of a boa constrictor swallowing a wild beast. Once, when I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picture in a book called “True Stories”, about the primeval forest.