The writer on the porch

Now I have a profession of my own, and I work at it the livelong day. But even if I were to sit on the porch with my work I don’t think a single boy would come—standing on one bare foot and rubbing his calf with the other—and watch my fingers to see how a writer’s business is done. I don’t say that it is a bad or useless profession: but it isn’t one of the superlatively fine and striking ones, and the material used is of a strange sort—you don’t even see it. But I’d like all the things I used to see to be in it: the ringing hammer-strokes of the smith and the colors of the whistling house painter, the patience of the tailor and the careful chipping of the stonemason, the bustling of the baker, the humility of the poor, and all the lusty strength and skill which men of towering stature put into their work before the astonished and fascinated eyes of a child.

—Karel Čapek