“Professor Bell, in his tortured efforts to sound fair and impersonal, arrives at an aesthetic principle too edifying for Art to bear. He says in effect that you can explore evil, drawing "on the tap roots of the demonic," but you may not approve it. But when you draw on those tap roots, who knows what you will find? Writers just back from their season in hell are likely to be covered in goat blood and tend to rave. The moralists can sort out the evidence later. But the writer with the correct attitude could not have entered hell in the first place.”

“What I called the perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or natural object, was a root or fibre of a root; but Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown.”

“….. it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.”

“Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.”

“If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right.”

“escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art.
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she'll embrace you
then when she's satisfied
she'll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you.”

“Turtle on its back in the desert sea / and you look like a cool drink / just slightly out of reach / Draw myself into the shell / waiting on a sign from God / or a nod from hell”

“If you're too sloppy, then you never get reproducible results, and then you never can draw any conclusions; but if you are just a little sloppy, then when you see something startling, (…) you nail it down (…). So I called it the "Principle of Limited Sloppiness."”

“You cannot teach creativity—how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.” Mario Vargas Llosa”

“Wilem tapped Simmon’s shoulder. “He’s telling the truth.”
Simmon glanced over at him. “Why do you say that?”
“He sounds more sincere than that when he lies.””