Now A Protestant Confronting A Catholic Ghost

No Special Writing Rituals. And My Desk Is Usually Cluttered.

The Greatest Obstacle To Pleasure Is Not Pain; It Is Delusion.

A Comparably Capacious Embrace Of Beauty And Pleasure - An Embrace That Somehow Extends To Death As Well As Life, To Dissolution As Well As Creation - Characterizes Montaigne's Restless Reflections On Matter In Motion, Cervantes's Chronicle Of His Mad Knight, Michelangelo's Depiction Of Flayed Skin, Leonardo's Sketches Of Whirlpools, Caravaggio's Loving Attention To The Dirty Soles Of Christ's Feet.

Literate Households In The 17th Century Would Have Had The Bible, John Bunyan's "the Pilgrim's Progress," And A Couple Of Other Books. Shakespeare Plays Were Cheap, So You Could Buy Those, But A Folio Cost A Pound, Which Was An Incredible Amount Of Money Then.

I Believe That Nothing Comes Of Nothing, Even In Shakespeare. I Wanted To Know Where He Got The Matter He Was Working With And What He Did With That Matter.