A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.

The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.

But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there. ... And all that cal.

laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.

If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.

Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.

Immortality makes sense only when the individual soul can be thought of as merging into a great collective mush of sainthood. If we take anything with us into the next world, it is not what survives in the memories of our relicts.