Though Life's Tuition Is Always Ruinous, Inexorably

Every Artist Joins A Conversation That's Been Going On For Generations, Even Millennia, Before He Or She Joins The Scene.

Those Rituals Of Getting Ready To Write Produce A Kind Of Trance State.

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.

It's Easier And Sociabler To Talk Technique Than It Is To Make Art.

My Dear Fellow,' Burlingame Said, 'we Sit Here On A Blind Rock Careening Through Space; We Are All Of Us Rushing Headlong To The Grave. Think You The Worms Will Care, When Anon They Make A Meal Of You, Whether You Spent Your Moment Sighing Wigless In Your Chamber, Or Sacked The Golden Towns Of Montezuma? Lookee, The Day's Nigh Spent; 'tis Gone Careening Into Time Forever. Not A Tale's Length Past We Lined Our Bowels With Dinner, And Already They Growl For More. We Are Dying Men, Ebenezer: I'faith, There's Time For Naught But Bold Resolves!