A Book Lives As Long As It

The Artist Usually Sets Out -- Or Used To -- To Point A Moral And Adorn A Tale. The Tale, However, Points The Other Way, As A Rule. Two Blankly Opposing Morals, The Artist's And The Tale's. Never Trust The Artist. Trust The Tale. The Proper Functions Of A Critic Is To Save The Tale From The Artist Who Created It.

The Cosmos Is A Vast Living Body, Of Which We Are Still Parts. The Sun Is A Great Heart Whose Tremors Run Through Our Smallest Veins. The Moon Is A Great Nerve Center From Which We Quiver Forever. Who Knows The Power That Saturn Has Over Us, Or Venus? But It Is A Vital Power, Rippling Exquisitely Through Us All The Time.

How I Hate The Attitude Of Ordinary People To Life. How I Loathe Ordinariness! How From My Soul I Abhor Nice Simple People, With Their Eternal Price List. It Makes My Blood Boil.

A Man Has No Religion Who Has Not Slowly And Painfully Gathered One Together, Adding To It, Shaping It; And One's Religion Is Never Complete And Final, It Seems, But Must Always Be Undergoing Modification.

The Whole Question Of Pornography Seems To Me A Question Of Secrecy. Without Secrecy There Would Be No Pornography. But Secrecy And Modesty Are Two Utterly Different Things. Secrecy Has Always An Element Of Fear In It, Amounting Very Often To Hate. Modesty Is Gentle And Reserved. Today, Modesty Is Thrown To The Winds, Even In The Presence Of The Grey Guardians. But Secrecy Is Hugged, Being A Vice In Itself. And The Attitude Of The Grey Ones Is: Dear Young Ladies, You May Abandon All Modesty, So Long As You Hug Your Dirty Little Secret.