“It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.” — Vladimir Nabokov

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.

The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.