When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man. РBlaise Pascal, Pens̩es, 1670

[G]usto thrives on freedom, and freedom in art, as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves. Moreover, any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others. – Marianne Moore (1887–1972), lecture, 1948

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason. They made no such demand upon those who wrote them. – Charles Caleb Colton

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. – Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948