Life Is Too Short For Grief. Or

Platitude: A Statement That Denies By Implication What It Explicitly Affirms.

My Sole Literary Ambition Is To Write One Good Novel, Then Retire To My Hut In The Desert, Assume The Lotus Position, Compose My Mind And Senses, And Sink Into Meditation, Contemplating My Novel.

Vladimir Nabokov Was A Writer Who Cared Nothing For Music And Whose Favorite Sport Was The Pursuit, Capture, And Murder Of Butterflies. This Explains Many Things; For Example, The Fact That Nabokov's Novels, For All Their Elegance And Wit, Resemble Nothing So Much As Butterflies Pinned To A Board: Pretty But Dead; Symmetrical But Stiff.

Balance, That's The Secret. Moderate Extremism. The Best Of Both Worlds.

It Is Not Death Or Dying That Is Tragic, But Rather To Have Existed Without Fully Participating In Life- That Is The Deepest Personal Tragedy.