“lectures broke into one's day and were clearly a terrible waste of time, necessary no doubt if you were reading law or medicine or some other vocational subject, but in the case of English, the natural thing to do was talk a lot, listen to music, drink coffee and wine, read books, and go to plays, perhaps be in plays…”

“You have made some notes, read some writing books, and done some research. Mostly what you've done is talk about writing a book. An idea for a book is not a book; it is a waste of time. There is no singular thing that makes someone a writer, but there is one thing that makes someone a joke--talking about writing a book without doing any work.”

“All I really want to do today is go to the book store, drink coffee and read.”

“If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

“I never get enough of the adrenaline rush of hearing good music played live and played loud like this. Hearing these songs again snatches me out of the day-to-day and helps me forget all the things I usually waste my time worrying about. As long as the music's playing I don't have to do anything except listen, relax, and enjoy myself.”

“There was a town where everything was forbidden.Now, since the only thing that wasn’t forbidden was the game tip-cat, the town’s subjects used to assemble on meadows behind the town and spend the day there playing tip-cat.And as the laws forbidding things had been introduced one at a time and always with good reason, no one found any cause for complaint or had any trouble getting used to them.Years passed. One day the constables saw that there was no longer any reason why everything should be forbidden and they sent messengers to inform their subjects that they could do whatever they wanted.The messengers went to those places where the subjects were wont to assemble.‘Hear ye, hear ye,’ they announced, ‘nothing is forbidden any more.’The people went on playing tip-cat.‘Understand?’ the messengers insisted. ‘You are free to do what you want.’‘Good,’ replied the subjects. ‘We’re playing tip-cat.’The messengers busily reminded them of the many wonderful and useful occupations they had once engaged in and could now engage in once again. But the subjects wouldn’t listen and just went on playing, stroke after stroke, without even stopping for a breather.Seeing that their efforts were in vain, the messengers went to tell the constables.‘Easy,’ the constables said. ‘Let’s forbid the game of tip-cat.’That was when the people rebelled and killed the lot of them.Then without wasting time, they got back to playing tip-cat.”