Never, dear gods. Never mess with mortals.
All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.
The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.
No purer artist exists or has ever existed than a child freed to imagine.
He was not a modest man. Contemplating suicide, he summoned a dragon.' Gothos' Folly
For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives.