“It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.”

Interview, TV Legends, August 6, 2005

Notes to Kenneth Allott, as quoted in Contemporary Verse (1948) edited by Kenneth Allott<!-- Penguin, London -->
Context: Certainly Mr Eliot in the twenties was responsible for a great vogue for verse-satire. An ideal formula of ironic, gently "satiric", self-expression was provided by that master for the undergraduate underworld, tired and thirsty for poetic fame in a small way. The results of Mr Eliot are not Mr Eliot himself: but satire with him has been the painted smile of the clown. Habits of expression ensuing from mannerism are, as a fact, remote from the central function of satire. In its essence the purpose of satire — whether verse or prose — is aggression. (When whimsical, sentimental, or "poetic" it is a sort of bastard humour.) Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.

A Case of Hypochondria, Newsweek (6 July 1970).

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

Source: On Being Blonde (2004), p. 79

Vorkosigan Saga, Komarr (1998)
Source: Miles in Love

You Who Never Arrived (as translated by Stephen Mitchell) (1913-1914)
Context: You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment.

Life After God (1994)