How Can We Expect Novelists To Be

An Intelligent Man Said That The World Felt Napoleon As A Weight, And That When He Died It Would Give A Great Oof Of Relief. This Is Just As True Of Byron, Or Of Such Byrons Of Their Days As Kipling And Hemingway: After A Generation Or Two The World Is Tired Of Being Their Pedestal, Shakes Them Of With An Oof, And Then - Hoisting Onto Its Back A New World-figure - Feels The Penetrating Satisfaction Of Having Made A Mistake All Its Own.

Many Poets Write As If They Had Been Decerebrated, And Not Simply Lobotomized, As A Cure For Their Melancholia.

I Simply Don't Want The Poems Mixed Up With My Life Or Opinions Or Picture Or Any Other Regrettable Concomitants. I Look Like A Bear And Live In A Cave; But You Should Worry.

An Author Frequently Chooses Solemn Or Overwhelming Subjects To Write About; He Is So Impressed At Writing About Life And Death That He Does Not Notice That He Is Saying Nothing Of The Slightest Importance About Either.

Kenneth Burke Calls Form The Satisfaction Of An Expectation; The Man Who Loved Children Is Full Of Such Satisfactions, But It Has A Good Deal Of The Deliberate Disappointment Of An Expectation That Is Also Form.