It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little — have few ver… - Susan Sontag

The notion of art as the dearly purchased outcome of an immense spiritual risk, one whose cost goes up with the entry and participation of each new player in the game

Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.