Imagine an American Hans Christian Andersen, conceive of the Brothers Grimm living in Missouri, and you will approximate Howard Schwartz, a fable-maker and fable-gatherer seduced by the uncanny and the unearthly. In Lilith's Cave, he once again reaches into a magical cornucopia of folklore and fantasy and spreads before us, in enchanting language, the marvels and shocks of dybbuks, ghosts, demons, spirits, and wizards.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

Death persecutes before it executes.

It isn't the instrument that influences High-Minded or Low-Minded; it's the quality of Mind itself.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.