In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art -- when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant -- is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity.

When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep.

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.