I give dignity second place to expedience.

The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

You used the word "civilization", which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

I haven't been to a movie since somebody gave me free tickets to Star Wars, which I went to.

What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.