But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what's going on in his heart and mind. - Aldous Huxley

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly — they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students — how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing — you know, like the very hardest X-rays — when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?

Nothing you do is ever insignificant.

"‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.