When the Ancient Persians had a big political decision to make they would debate the matter twice: once drunk, and once sober. If they came to the sa… - Mark Forsyth

Epistrophe is the trope of obsession. It's the trope of emphasizing one point again and again. And it's the trope of not being able to escape that one conclusion, which is one of the reasons that songs are so suited to the idea of obsessive love, political certainty and other such unhealthy ideas. You can't reason in an epistrophic pop song. You can't seriously consider the alternatives, because the structure dictates that you'll always end up at the same point, thinking about the same girl and giving peace a chance.

Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, and he learnt them well.

A “peep-show box” in that more innocent age was a box with a magnifying glass in the side through which you could see little painted wonders. In the twentieth century some bright and drooling spark had the idea of putting dirty pictures inside, and eventually somebody decided to shove a whole girl in there. This is called Progress.