He could have gone over that night and faced the music but how much music is a man supposed to face? - John Updike

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.