Every culture has a butt for its jokes. Americans have the Polacks, the English have the Irish, and the Irish have people from Cork. - Mark Forsyth

if authors were to let a trifling thing like ignorance stop them from writing, the bookshops would be empty.

To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility. Mountaineers do it, and climb Everest in clothes that would have you laughed out of the gutter. I suspect they also communicate quickly and efficiently, poor things. But for the rest of us, not threatened by death and yetis, clothes and language can be things of beauty. I would no more write without art because I didn’t need to, than I would wander outdoors naked just because it was warm enough.

Who needs sense when you have alliteration?