Simple Distillation

Famous quotes containing the words simple and/or distillation:

    And would you be a poet
    Before you’ve been to school?
    Ah, well! I hardly thought you
    So absolute a fool.
    First learn to be spasmodic—
    A very simple rule.
    For first you write a sentence,
    And then you chop it small;
    Then mix the bits, and sort them out
    Just as they chance to fall:
    The order of the phrases makes
    No difference at all.
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It’s the drowning out of false voices.
    Don Delillo (b. 1926)