Genius and inspiration

Young people get inspiration, but old people get genius. Not true, but comforting.

"When Balzac had this revelation, after trying and failing to start a dozen businesses using his mother’s money, he raced through the streets of Paris to find his sister, announcing, “I’m about to become a genius!” Charles Bukowski was 49 when it happened: “I have one of two choices -- stay in the post office and go crazy, or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.”"
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_12_013789.php

Though known for his witty and mesmerizing ruminations on psychedelics, consciousness, and the onrushing eschaton, McKenna probably considered himself a naturalist more than anything. He loved butterflies, and nursed a life-long obsession with Alfred Russel Wallace, the Victorian biologist, explorer, butterfly hunter, and Spiritualist who, independently of Darwin, came up with the theory of natural selection.

http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=journal&cat=looking&file=chunkfrom-2008-12-08-1154-0.txt