"What's the answer, he wondered, walking through the library, putting out the lights, putting out the lights, putting out the lights, is it all in the whorls on our thumbs and fingers? Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar's lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe."

Something Wicked This Way Comes / Ray Bradbury

A Young Writer's Prayer

Lord, you know me better than I know myself. If I should retreat suddenly from a swarm of buzzing voices to put ink on paper in a frenzy, I do so because it lights my soul on fire. I know only that I must love and write, but I know these things with ferocious certainty. Make my pen like the sword of the Maid, that I may cut down with words the enemies of light. Amen.

Eddie

The days melt away to beautiful music.
She wraps herself like a cloud of smoke around my cranium,
well acquainted with regret.