no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it. - Jacques Barzun

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.

"Unfortunately, the combatants on both sides keep arguing whether the modern mind is harmed - some say victimized - by "too much reason," the attackers holding that science and numbers are not the only truth; the defenders retorting that if reason is given up, intellectual anarchy and wild superstition will reign. The latter are right about reason as an activity - reasoning; the former are right about Rationalism, the dominance of a particular form of reason and its encroachment where it does not belong."

What we ask of a writer in the first place is a unique voice. We ask for the rest later, and we may even pretend that it is only the later things we required — no personal, individual, induplicable quality, just pure art.