...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.

I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth.

Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .

a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.

A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.