The Unstoppables is a series about people whose ambition is undimmed by time. Below, Frederic Tuten explains, in his own words, what continues to motivate him.

I never had an ambition to be a painter, to be a writer. I had a yearning. It was a yearning for life, and I equated life with the life of an artist, a life of freedom, generosity, a life with other people who had the same interests in making beautiful things together. I thought that was everything in the world.

Part of my yearning was to leave the Bronx, where I lived, to come out of that dreary little world where everything shut down by nine o’clock and where there were no bookstores.

At 15, I dropped out of high school. My dream was to save enough money to live in Paris. I’d seen “An American in Paris,” with Gene Kelly. He falls in love with a young Frenchwoman, and I remember so vividly, so poignantly, how I felt watching them together. I thought, I want that. I want to meet a young woman like that, and we would become lovers. And that I would paint and that that would be my life.

I had a friend, John Resko — he was a writer, a painter and my neighbor — and he gave me Kafka novels and other books I’d never read. We’d take the subway and go to art galleries, to downtown Manhattan. The experience gave me a taste of another life.

I had told Resko: “When I try to write, I get anxious. I want to leave, to go down to the street for a cigarette.” He said to me: “I guess you haven’t realized yet, the adventure isn’t outside in the street. The adventure is at your desk.” That’s the place you discover new things.