I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values - the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

Green grass, green grandstands, green concession stalls, green paper cups, green folding chairs and visors for sale, green and white ropes, green-topped Georgia pines. If justice were poetic, Hubert Green would win it every year.

I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

The literary scene is a kind of Medusa’s raft, small and sinking, and one’s instinct when a newcomer tries to clamber aboard is to step on his fingers.