Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain.

There is a difference between something being essential, and it being necessary. If you take your favorite book and strip it down to what is merely essential to tell the story, it would be butchery. The end result would horrify you. Essential is the bones of the story, but the soul lives somewhere else.

I decided to dub the room with the good chairs my lutery. Or perhaps my performatory. I would need a while to come up with something suitably pretentious.

You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.

Just pity him, my boy. Tomorrow we'll be on our way, but he'll have to keep his own disagreeable company until the day he dies.

Caffeine helps a lot. That and a certain amount of isolation.

...nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.