Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it.

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.

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.

A woman’s beauty lies, not in any exaggeration of the specialized zones, nor in any general harmony that could be worked out by means of the sectio aurea or a similar aesthetic superstition; but in the arabesque of the spine. The curve by which the back modulates into the buttocks. It is here that grace sits and rides a woman’s body.

Appealingness is inversely proportional to attainability.

The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.