“Recognizing the artist Joseph Cornell's genius for recycling, he inscribed a book to him as the Benvenuto Cellini of Flotsam and Jetsam”

“You take the flotsam," I tell her, "I'll take the jetsam."You always get the jetsam,"she says pretending to pout. "Do you ever think if poeple heard our conversations they'd lock us up?"All the time.”

“I've read seventeen novels and bushels of poetry-- really necessary novels like Vanity Fair and Richard Feverel and Alice in Wonderland. Also Emerson's Essays and Lockhart's Life of Scott and the first volume of Gibbon's Roman Empire and half of Benvenuto Cellini's Life--wasn't he entertaining? He used to saunter out and casually kill a man before breakfast.”

“This book was written using 100% recycled words.”

“Flowers don't tell, they show. That's the way good books should be too."--Stephanie Skeem. Author of Flotsam”

“Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight to his steps. The Term 'genius' when applied to him simply means a man who understands what others only know about. A poet, artist or architect, necessarily 'understands' in this sense and is likely, if not careful, to have the term 'genius' applied to him; in which case he will no longer be thought human, trustworthy or companionable. Whatever may be his medium of expression he utters truth with manifest beauty of thought. If he is an architect, his building is natural. In him, philosophy and genius live by each other, but the combination is subject to popular suspicion and appellation 'genius' likely to settle him--so far as the public is concerned.”