Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.

... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.

If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.

I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.