It is fairly clear that many of the arguments against proposition testing are really arguments against propositions themselves.

Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.

You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.

Poe was the first writer to write about main characters who were bad guys or who were mad guys, and those are some of my favorite stories.

For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.

Ka works and the world moves on.