Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.
The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.
Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.
No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square.
But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.
Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.
Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.
