One reason writers write is out of revenge.

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

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.

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.

An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.

In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing.

The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.