Robert Busby

“For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.”
― W.H. Auden

“Therefore you must continually confess7 your sins for yourselves with one another”
― Anonymous, One New Man Bible

“gratuitous masturbation
of the
psyche.”
― Charles Bukowski, Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories

“In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."

[Letter to Joan Lancaster, 26 June 1956]”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children