I Walk Slowly, Like One Who Comes

I Try To Avoid Purple Patches, Fine Writing, All That Kind Of Thing... Because I Think They're A Mistake. And Then Sometimes It Comes Through And Sometimes It Doesn't, But That's Not Up To Me. It's Up To Chance.

A Writer Needs Loneliness, And He Gets His Share Of It. He Needs Love, And He Gets Shared And Also Unshared Love. He Needs Friendship. In Fact, He Needs The Universe. To Be A Writer Is, In A Sense, To Be A Day-dreamer - To Be Living A Kind Of Double Life.

The Man Who Has Learned That Three Plus One Are Four Doesn't Have To Go Through A Proof Of That Assertion With Coins, Or Dice, Or Chess Pieces, Or Pencils. He Knows It, And That's That. He Cannot Conceive A Different Sum. There Are Mathematicians Who Say That Three Plus One Is A Tautology For Four, A Different Way Of Saying "four" ... If Three Plus One Can Be Two, Or Fourteen, Then Reason Is Madness.

The People Of Tlön Are Taught That The Act Of Counting Modifies The Amount Counted, Turning Indefinites Into Definites. The Fact That Several Persons Counting The Same Quantity Come To The Same Result Is For The Psychologists Of Tlön An Example Of The Association Of Ideas Or Of Memorization.

Truly Fine Poetry Must Be Read Aloud. A Good Poem Does Not Allow Itself To Be Read In A Low Voice Or Silently. If We Can Read It Silently, It Is Not A Valid Poem: A Poem Demands Pronunciation. Poetry Always Remembers That It Was An Oral Art Before It Was A Written Art. It Remembers That It Was First Song.