To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity. – Steven Brust
All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about whats cool. – Steven Brust
My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall – whats going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am. – Jonathan Safran Foer
The civil law cannot provide but by common measures… all their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best Carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. – Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, 1659