As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
The sea never changes and its works, for all the talks of men, are wrapped in mystery.
I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.