kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both.

See the cat? See the cradle?

What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.

She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for.

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.