The First Obligation Of The Writer Is

Tis E'er The Wont Of Simple Folk To Prize The Deed And O'erlook The Motive, And Of Learned Folk To Discount The Deed And Lay Open The Soul Of The Doer.

Nobody Knew How To Be What They Were Right.

Somewhere In The World There Was A Young Woman With Such Splendid Understanding That She'd See Him Entire, Like A Poem Or Story, And Find His Words So Valuable After All That When He Confessed His Apprehensions She Would Explain Why They Were In Fact The Very Things That Made Him Precious To Her...and To Western Civilization! There Was No Such Girl, The Simple Truth Being.

One Of The Things I Miss About Teaching Is That Students Would Tell Me What I Ought To Read. One Of My Students, Back In The 1960s, Put Me Onto Borges, And I Remember Another Mentioning Flann O'brien's At Swim Two-birds In The Same Way.

You’re Probably Wasting Time On Things Like Eating And Sleeping. Cease That, And Read All Of Philosophy And All Of Literature. Also Art. Plus Politics And A Few Other Things. The History Of Everything.